


Out of Ash, Shift and Save Me in the Night

by cymamoremocha



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Community: deancasbigbang, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge, Hell Trauma, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Memory Loss, POV Dean Winchester, Slow Burn, dcbb2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 08:43:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16405103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cymamoremocha/pseuds/cymamoremocha
Summary: Dean returns from Hell with an axe to grind. But he finds out pretty quickly just how damaging Hell trauma can be. Left humiliated and in a weakened state, Dean’s big plans to save the world are put on hold, as he now needs his brother to help glue his brain back together. And who is his mysterious rescuer? Is it the same person he dreams about at night but never actually met? Why can’t he remember?





	1. Chapter 1

 

“How you feeling, anyway?” Bobby eyes him suspiciously.

“I’m a little hungry.”

“No, I mean, do you feel like yourself? Anything strange, or different?”

~~~

“Hey Dean, what was it like?”

“What, Hell?” Sam squares his jaw in response, and Dean feels the grin slide off his face. “I don’t know, I-I-I must have blacked it out.” Sam doesn’t look convinced, so Dean makes eye contact when he adds in a much more even tone, “I don’t remember a damn thing.”

His acting must have improved in 40 years, because Sam’s brow smooths out in relief.

“Thank God for that.”

“Yeah.”

~~~

 “I invoke, conjure, and command you. Appear unto me before this circle. I invoke, conjure, and command-“

Pamela Barnes cuts off her own chanting as the lights and candles flicker and the TV in the adjacent room switches on to static. Dean opens his eyes and looks at her, hers are still squeezed shut and she’s concentrating on voices they can’t hear.

The air pressure in the room changes so suddenly it makes his ears pop. He’s reminded of gas station windows blowing out from an unseen force when he was just hours resurrected.

“No, sorry. I don’t scare easy.” the psychic argues back, almost to herself.

The table starts to shake and rattles the candlesticks in front of them. The tinnitus that Dean thought was just in his own head gets loud enough to look like it’s affecting everyone else, with how they’re wincing from it. They don’t let go of each other’s hands. Pamela keeps her connection on Dean’s arm firm.

“What is it?” he has to ask.

“Its name. It’s whispering to me, warning me to turn back,” she says urgently in Dean’s direction without opening her eyes. Louder, she continues “I conjure and command you, show me your face.”

The louder she chants, the harder the table shakes, until their joined hands are the only things anchoring its legs to the floor.

Dean shuts his eyes against the pressure and heat building up to his face, like he’s being pumped full of hot lava. His left shoulder feels like it’s being set on fire from under her hand. The tinnitus is screaming in tandem with the second heartbeat directly into his right eardrum. He suddenly remembers a blinding white light igniting him from the inside out.

Bobby looks worried and cuts in with “maybe we should stop,” but Pamela keeps going, almost shouting over the rising din in the room.

“I almost got it! I command you -show me your face. Show me your face NOW!”

On cue, the candles explode in great, tall plumes, and the men all jump back from the table. None of them notice the identical flames erupting from her eyes until they hear her scream in pain an instant later.

_What’ll it be today, boy?_

Dean feels his pulse inside his throat. He watches Pamela’s once coy, cat-like features twist in pure agony. Blood weeps from her eyes. Her head is thrown back and her body convulses from the force and shock of it. It only lasts a few seconds. She slides out of her chair and crumples onto the floor. Dean is still watching in slow motion.

_Flames and blood. Screaming women, weeping, begging for it to stop. He heard all and none of it, and the only thing he felt was heat._

Bobby springs into action. He rushes to her side and yells for Sam to call 911. Sam looks like he doesn’t know whether to run or hurl, but he leaps out of his seat and makes a mad dash for the landline on the wall.

Dean hasn’t moved. He can’t. He can only try to blink the flashes of fire out of his vision, but it won’t leave. His chest is heaving and he’s wondering why he’s not on fire too, he can still feel the rapid heat of it in the meat of his cheekbones.

_Like it was yesterday. It was yesterday. Look at you, a shiny new penny. Just itching to be melted down again._

From his vantage point, he can see Bobby cradling Pamela’s torso and head against himself, and he can hear the murmur of Sam on the phone dulling to a throb in his ear. Pamela is sobbing something that looks like “I can’t see,” but she sounds like she’s underwater.

Why could he smell her blood on his hands?

There are twin charred caverns on her face where her eyes used to be, and she’s still shaking and keening from the trauma. The older man looks completely out of his depth, but continues to hold her and check her for any other injuries. As he looks to Dean, his face goes through ten phases of shock, fear, anger, and confusion in the span of a few seconds.

_Look at you. Look at what you can do. I knew that yearning for destruction was all over you._

Dean’s still watching the burnt flesh that used to be Pamela’s eyes with open-mouthed horror and morbid fascination. The white-hot touch of her hand just before she let go of his shoulder continues to flood through his body. Like he was the fire. Resurrected and still burning.

_You just needed a little time to…. come around._

Everything stops for him, and he feels the magma run indifferent through his veins, thicker, hotter, and more evil than blood.

His hands are no longer gripping the chair in Pamela’s kitchen, but wrapped around a blade. He knows for a fact that the blood running down the ragged and tarnished surface is not his own. Was it Pamela’s? Bobby’s? Sam’s? Did they make him kill Sam again, just for fun?

He can’t bear to look at the scene before him, knowing exactly which faces they assigned to his latest victims. But he can still hear them.

He can hear the screams and feel the papery and rubbery nucleus of the beings they came from. He worked it between his fingertips. He dug and scraped and searched through the meat of them.

It gave him neither joy, sadness, nor hatred. Years spent carving and breaking, watching smoke pour from their eyes and mouths, he could see and taste it all. He was still there. He never left. Sam wasn’t real, he’d watched Bobby die so many times. Even Pamela was made up. A new way to torture him.

So he’d remember his place.

_Ready to do it all again tomorrow, kid?_

He didn’t remember Sam calling out for him. He didn’t remember hitting the floor himself. He didn’t even remember pissing his pants.

When he came to in the hospital later, more sore than he’d ever been in his life, including the worst hunts, they told him he had taken one look at Pam’s burned-out eyes, and his own went unfocused and unseeing. Then, while Sam was still on the phone with 911, Dean went rigid and fell out of his chair and started rattling around on the floor under her table.

No one said anything about fire, besides the one that now left Pam permanently blind.

He’s diagnosed with his first tonic clonic seizure, which shocks everyone and annoys Dean. After being reassured of no “lasting” effects, he high-tails it out of the hospital with Bobby and Sam in tow before anyone can ask too many questions.

He’s already confused and humiliated, from the tip of his tongue he didn’t know he bit during the seizure, to his third toe he also didn’t know he fractured on one of the legs of the goddamn table. There was no major damage to his head, but his skull feels cracked open like a watermelon dropped on the sidewalk.

And Sam and Bobby, bless their worrying, freaked out hearts, won’t shut up on the drive back and leave him to sleep off his one random medical catastrophe since he got topside.

Their interrogations and insinuations about what could have caused his little episode leave him with no choice, and he tells them everything. His memories he never wanted to admit to, the hellhounds, the death, the torture he saw on the rack. Thirty years as the meat, ten as the hook. It all rumbles out of him monotonous and frustrated, betraying none of the trauma it could have contained if he ever imagined a scenario where he decided to maybe finally talk about it.

He doesn’t tell them about his rescue, both because he doesn’t remember it, and also because he feels like if he spills any more of his guts out, they’d have to take a U-turn right back to the hospital.

They’re both quiet for a long time after that, and Dean feels his brother’s puppy eyes in the rear view mirror. He’s so exhausted.

They make an executive decision then (Dean’s vote doesn’t count), to not try anything stupid like summoning this thing that burned out Pam’s eyes, before they know exactly what they’re dealing with and what it’s doing to Dean.

~~~

“You sure you’re fine?”

“Yes. Stop asking.”

“I’m just making sure. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to get back into a hunt so soon after… y’know.” The leather creaks a little as Sam shifts minutely and awkwardly in his seat.

“Yeah, I heard you the first 30 times. But it’s too late to back out now, ain’t it?” Dean wipes his hand over the corners of his mouth in frustration. He still feels the snoopy Sasquatch looking at him, so he adds, “I’m good.”

Sam picked a hell of a time to ask about his well-being again, considering they’re staking out an indie club in Colorado for a possible vampire nest. _How cliché_ , Dean thought, _vamps in leather and studs._ But they’d been sitting in the car for the better part of the evening, and nothing exciting had happened. And as usual when things got quiet and pensive, so did Sam.

Truth be told, Dean was still a little freaked out after his first seizure and wondered what exactly cracked his gourd to make him react like that. He had been on pins and needles for a few days, both scared and itching for an attack or some kind of follow up. On paper he passed it off to Sam and Bobby as a fluke, since he was only 2 days fresh from the grave at that point. But after a few weeks and no further static they were more inclined to believe him, and it had been pretty much business as usual from then on.

Only now with finding more excuses to avoid his brother’s occasional lingering eye, and not even protesting or nosing in when Sam decides to disappear every now and then himself.

Business as usual.

They weren’t so much back to being Priscilla: Queen of the Desert though. Bobby and Sam were still firm in their decision to not try summoning whoever or whatever brought Dean back. Not until they were sure their research was airtight and that the attempt alone wouldn’t trigger any more flashbacks or melt his brain.

No matter how much Dean protested that he could handle it, they still said no.

So he moped on hunts and looked over his shoulder for any hint of a whisper that it was all connected to something bigger. He was continually disappointed and met with freelance monsters who had no idea he had even been out of the game for months.

It was all starting to grate on his ego.

**~~~**

There was no purpose. No motivation.

Everything was bled out of him and replaced with ash. He was nothing, and lower still. Something that wouldn’t have a misery to be free from.

Terror lived and breathed inside his heart, and he wished he could tune it out. Exist and not exist for all eternity as a curse and nothing more. But he had been doing this for so long, it was all methodical, and he knew that was part of his punishment. He was rebuilt every day to pay attention. To not be able to turn off even one of his senses. His mentors were forged from the thickest and dirtiest rivers of evil and ego, and they knew exactly how to engineer this for him.

He had to feel every hiss and scream in the marrow of his bones, as the flesh he stripped may as well have been his own. Emptiness and despair filled his lungs. He exhaled every breath in a fume of putrid sulfuric smoke, to make him choose carefully which words were now made profane.

His hands that were not hands. Once gentle but rough in their callouses and caresses, now scabbed over with soot and blood. He could easily count the layers if he wanted to. If he could feel want anymore.

Every second, every millisecond of his time served had been logged and recorded in his brain. Every beat that he vaguely remembered being in tempo with a heart, he felt it all chip away at what was left of his soul. They reminded him every day he had one, so he didn’t have to do that existential wondering of where it had gone.

 They took the blackened thing out and showed it to him every day, and he watched them play games with it. They cheered every time he made his marks on the rack, and the pitiful thing shuddered. He knew it wouldn’t last much longer, and he would be there to watch it die.

They wouldn’t ever allow him to be the one to kill it himself, to put it out of its misery.

It didn’t appear to emit any sort of light anymore, and he would cry for it if he hadn’t wasted all his tears within the first couple years. Tears that now seemed juvenile in hindsight.

They weren’t even trying that hard at first, and he would fill the gaseous void of chains and fire with his desperate wails. Gut-wracking sobs for Sam, his mom, dad, anyone to help him, to free him. Like he didn’t deserve to rot there. Like he didn’t choose this very fate for himself. Like he wasn’t another in a long, infamous line of sad, stupid boys who disappointed their families.

Now he knew better. He knew better than to hope. He dragged hope onto the rack every day, ignored its pleas for mercy and forgiveness. He set it up against some of his best and most vicious tools, or sometimes even just the ones that weren’t that effective, but helped drag the process on a while longer. He whittled his way into where he knew hope lived. He split it and strung it out into ribbons for his mentors to applaud at. He ignored them.

Hope, like ego, may have been forged in Hell, but it did not last there.

Which was why he was surprised when it came searching for him. In the darkest manifestations of hatred and pain he had carved for himself, Dean never thought anything would come for him there. He gave up waiting decades ago.

The day the brightest white light came screaming into the gray chasm, was the day he felt his heart tremble inside his chest.

Fear.

He hadn’t felt that in a while, and his eyes calcified against its magnificent burn.

The heat from the blinding light was not like what he had been used to. Where he had been pressed in on all sides and had been penetrated through every pore by the heat of Hell, this was different. It hooked at the middle of his chest and lit him up like a bonfire.

Now there was screaming and chaos in the vastness around him, but of another kind. He had nowhere to run, and didn’t think to hide, as everywhere the bodies of demons dropped mid-scatter, their eyes scorched and empty, or else plunged into the roiling abyss.

He could not bring himself to face his rescuer, because this could only be a rescue.

Only in the most symmetrical and ironic of storylines could this have happened, that someone should come for him long after he had drained the life out of hope, and was now part of what they had been sent to fight back. He was sure it was a mistake, even while standing in the charred remains of his former tormentors they had smote in an instant.

He should have been among the wreckage. He was not worthy.

He felt a soft unmistakable touch of feathers on his face, smearing away the devastation and debris, and with it a restraint that had kept his head and shoulders low and desecrated. It lifted his chin and straightened his spine. In the shocking and shaking weightlessness he opened his eyes to see his own once brilliant green staring back at him in the reflection of a glittering mass of feathers. And his soul.

God, his soul.

He saw it reflected in the light of his savior’s wings, as they cradled it and smoothed it over like a delicate and precious thing. Not fragile. Delicate. The same motions used to clear his cataract-filled eyes from the bile of Hell were now thoroughly cleansing it from his soul. It shone more brightly than ever, and he wondered if all the damage had been an illusion.

But he knew it wasn’t, because now it was wiped raw. And it hurt. It hurt worse than anything he’d ever felt in his life, or afterlife. He remembered blinking at the swollen and shiny orb, and knowing it was about to be placed back inside himself, but not wanting it to. It was too new and too fresh, and his ribcage was cracked open and splintered into shards that would surely hurt it more.

But they pressed on.

He cried and pleaded with his disused voice for them not to place this clean thing back in his tarnished body. But they pressed on. There wasn’t even a face for him to look at and glean sympathy off of.

He felt a white fire lick at the broken edges of his chest, and something like a hand being placed over his left shoulder. To ground him right there in the red, molten rubble.

A chorus of whispers and disembodied voices clanged joyously inside him, and his head was thrown back with the same white fire and light pouring from his eyes and mouth into the sky above him.

DEAN WINCHESTER IS SAVED.

He shuddered and writhed, but the force of a hand burned and kept him rooted to the spot. Before he knew it, he was wrapped tightly in their bundle and at the mercy of their flight. Heat beat as his back, and he blacked out against the rushing light.

~

He hears the key turn in the lock, then Sam steps in and shuts the door behind him. He looks as confused as Dean feels when he sees him just standing in the middle of the room for no reason.

“Hey,”

His brain is still catching up.

“What are you doing?”

“Couldn’t sleep, went to get a burger.”

“In my car?” He should be defensive, he thinks. It comes out more bewildered than he’d probably intended.

“Force of habit, sorry.” Sam’s tone is clipped, but his eyes are wide as he looks up and down Dean’s form. “What are you doing?” he echoes Dean’s question.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know-“ he trails off and looks at the area around himself. Gulps around a dry mouth. Then, as an afterthought, “I’m fucking sore.”

“What?”

“I was asleep… and all of a sudden I woke up like this. My arms and my legs, they’re sore.”

“Your mouth is bleeding too.”

“What?” he shuffles to the bathroom mirror and inspects himself. “I think I bit my tongue. It hurts too.” he confirms.

For some reason he can’t bring himself to be worried about it. About anything. But now Sam looks worried, and his whole spooked-cat demeanor changes as he takes a cautious step forward while visually scanning the room.

“Was anyone with you?”

“What? No.”

“And you didn’t hear or see anyone come in?”

“I don’t think so. Like I said, I fell asleep and I guess you took off after that.”

Sam looks a little guilty; Dean doesn’t think to figure out why.

After he finishes wiping the dried blood off his chin, he stands there and watches his brother peer around corners and under the furniture. He watches him lift aside the now stained sheets on Dean’s bed, shift around the rumpled sheets on his own, before moving on and picking up, inspecting, and replacing their various debris from all over the room.

“What’re you doing?”

“Looking for hex bags. Just like I thought we did when we first-“ he pauses when he rounds to face Dean again, much closer than he was before. His gaze drops south before quickly coming back up to his eye level.

“Dean-“ he hesitates, eyes darting all over except Dean’s face, “did you know you wet your pants?”

When Dean is more fully aware of what’s going on and stops being so bug-eyed, Sam gets urgent again and wants to take him to the hospital to get properly checked out. He’d apparently been considering this since Dean ran from the last episode with his tail between his legs and without any real testing. Seizures are one of the few things that scare him apparently.

They scare Dean too to be honest, but he’s so fucking mad and embarrassed. So he refuses. When Sam protests that something could genuinely be wrong, he pulls the big brother card and tells him he’ll kick his ass if he doesn’t drop it. He doesn’t want to sit there and have doctors poking and prodding, or cutting him open to see how far his damage really goes.

Not like he doesn’t know already, but he’d rather not have it confirmed.

Sam pouts and gives him all the bitchiness that only he can muster, but finally relents when Dean points out that it’s only been two seizures, and other than a serious case of muscle soreness and a tender tongue, he “feels fine.”

“Besides, this could be a one-off deal and just a side-effect from something else. It just needs time to wear off.” It’s a bullshit excuse, but Sam accepts it and shuts up.

He’s actually a little surprised at how easy it is to convince Sam to back off on this. Normally he has to do a lot more shouting and literally sweep his big giraffe legs out from under him before he comes to Dean’s side about anything. This time he just accepts it with a scowl and retreats into his phone or out of the room entirely. He doesn’t even threaten to call Bobby about any of it.

It would be more suspicious if Dean wasn’t himself really distracted by the worry and embarrassment still humming under his skin. He hopes that’s all this is.


	2. CHAPTER TWO

He walked through a barren landscape of abandoned warehouses, all set in uneven rows and stretching beyond the horizon. They were all in the same dilapidated state, with rotting wood wrapped around the walls and slats of corrugated metal missing from their rooftops. Unreadable sigils covered them down into their foundations, and Dean didn’t know how he knew that.

It was when he realized that he could only perceive them by sight -no splinters in the pads of his fingers when he touched the walls, no dust or age for him to sneeze at, not even the structures creaked or shifted their weight -that he knew this had to be a dream.

The real world had the arrogance to be annoyingly detailed and unpredictable. Noticing detail was literally part of the job description, but sometimes it could get overwhelming. Not here though. The setting here looked like it was created using a fog machine’s idea of the perfect haunted house. Complete with the gray filter over everything and the craggly spires looming ominously in the distance.

It was almost more exhausting to force his brain to not point out all the perfect consistencies and just be, to wait for something to happen that, from the looks of it, he was clearly not in charge of deciding.

Bullshit logic aside, he didn’t remember ever dreaming about empty warehouses, except for the ones that featured his occasional nightmare of a hunt gone wrong. Then those were more of a backdrop to the real PTSD-inducing survivor’s guilt action, the kind that would cause him to jerk awake, sweating and breathing like a jackhammer, and crying for the shredded faces of those whose names he’d long forgotten.

No, this was different. There was no story playing out in front of him, no memory he was forced to relive and re-fail. There wasn’t even an amateur theater interpretation of the thing he had attempted to fight in real life, and he almost felt disappointed.

He was alone.

Which, now that he thought about it, was probably one of the worst nightmares his subconscious could have chosen for him. Right down to the lackadaisical attempts to present itself as anything other than harmless.

After seeing how well and desperately he had acclimated to being around living, breathing humans again, this would be perfect. His subconscious was apparently one sick son of a bitch with a hard-on for irony, to force him to go from one extreme to the other. Talk and smile and touch people by day, but at night wander through this wasting and artificial backdrop, forgotten.

He was also probably being dramatic and this was just the cold open that had no bearing on what was to come. Still, it felt significant, and he had no other choice but to wait. It could also end up being the start of some hitherto undiscovered psychic abilities through dreams, and he was about to wake up right before hearing something important.

He could almost hear Sam’s excited chatter at the prospect of Dean having psychic powers too, and he really hoped that wasn’t the case. He was supposed to have been the normal brother.

The air that had previously been stagnant and manufactured started humming altogether with some kind of built up electricity. It lay heavy in the clouds above him and he could have sworn he heard a chorus of whispering coming from the sigils on the warehouses’ walls. It was all suddenly so indistinct where before Dean could see through the individual layers of the façade.

He knew there was grave dirt under his fingernails without verifying it, and it filled him with dread. That connection to the earth, specifically the earth he’d had to climb through, is the last thing he could find comfort in right now.

He almost wished this was one of those dreams where he could fly. He hated flying, but anything was better than this. He could sail off into the rumbling gray of the unknown sky, and panic where he knew at least the ground couldn’t swallow him.

He knew the lakes of lava, soot, ash, and death lie in just a thin dirt crust beneath his feet. Maybe that’s where it was all going to leak through again. It was caked on his palms, maybe he would be the one sewer -the one portal -for it to all swell and flood into this empty broken world. To be carried out by him.

He was remade in the fires of it all, so it made sense he would be its vessel. It finally made sense.

All at once, the waiting electricity in the sky discharged itself. The strange sigils on the duplicate houses lit up and blazed bright in the dreary landscape, so bright that Dean didn’t notice at first how they began to shift around in their foundations and mingle, until the buildings themselves started descending into the earth like the quicksand childhood movies had told him was dangerous. Quicksand and strangers.

He didn’t need to, but he forced himself to breathe steady and remember how to hold a weapon, if one appeared for him this time.

He felt the presence of someone or something else before he saw anything. The clouds split open and there was a figure walking towards him from the middle distance. Dean didn’t remember taking his eyes off the landscape enough to blink, but he must have. The figure wasn’t there, and then he was.

At first glance, he felt he should be terrified of a stranger just appearing out of thin air and walking towards him with a purpose, or at least recover enough to fight him off if he needed to, not that he was ever able to fight back in these dreams. But after the shock wore off, and he could see a man not much older than himself in a loose suit and trench coat, something about him struck Dean as familiar. He didn’t remember ever meeting this guy before though, he’s sure he would have noticed.

Even now with the way he was striding at a healthy clip, his demeanor and how rigidly he held himself gave him a much bigger appearance. The wings helped with that too.

For reasons he was forced to blame on the dream atmosphere, he was able to see a pair of HUGE black wings protruding from the guy’s back, and trailing behind him as he walked. Their size alone made them look like they weighed a ton, but they didn’t seem to slow him down any. If anything, the span of glittering black feathers was the most animated part of him, as his face was stoic and trained directly on Dean.

He was just in awe of his imagination at this point, and was totally caught off guard as the man came to a stop a few feet in front of him and just stared. Dean was absurdly self-conscious of his jawline for a moment as he took in the features of the stranger.

Everything about him felt deliberate and haphazard at the same time, from the wildness in his dark hair to the hard set of his mouth. He felt the intensity of bright blue eyes roaming over him before stopping to peer into his own. He swallowed.

He didn’t know about time passage in this place, but it felt like ages of getting his insides scrutinized via his pupils before he thought to say anything. The dude didn’t even blink.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.” like it was a well-rehearsed script.

Dean was taken aback because, first, who says things like that, and second, this guy’s voice must have been lifted from every copy of a Clint Eastwood film left to die of thirst in the desert. He felt the low rumble deep in the center of his chest like a threat of a nearby lightning strike.

Thirdly, what the hell?

“What the hell?”

“Not exactly.”

“I mean, what are you?”

“My name is Castiel. I’m an angel of the Lord.”

Bullshit. “Get the hell out of here. There’s no such thing.”

Despite the fact that he was currently looking at the wings that usually proved something like that, and they almost puffed up in indignation.

“This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith.”

“And how am I supposed to have faith in something I’ve never seen before, huh? We’re still in my dream, jackass.”

If he was a real angel, with the power and the smiteyness Dean had imagined, he didn’t know how wise it was to antagonize and call him names off the bat. But a point is a point. This guy had yet to make an appearance in real life.

“Your psychic attempted to summon me and the effect of my grace burned out her eyes.”

Holy shit.

Dean takes a moment to blink stupidly at him before he remembers himself.

“Well some angel you are.”

“I warned her to turn back. She did not listen.”

Dean begins pacing the ground between them to work out his frustration, sneaking glances at the broad span of Castiel’s wings every few steps. They remain as still as him now.

“How do I know that this is really what you look like, and not some kind of manifestation to, I don’t know, turn me to the Dark Side or something?”

Castiel cocks his head to one side. Like a bird.

“I don’t understand that reference.”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Why this?” He gestures up and down at the battered trench coat and the rumpled blue suit underneath. “I thought you guys were supposed to look more…legit? More “holy”.”

Dean doesn’t mention that he can practically taste the electricity coming off this guy’s eyes though.

“Well you have already experienced the effects of viewing my form without a vessel.” he says matter-of-factly, and Dean narrows his eyes.

“Wait a fucking minute. The dream. That was you?”

“Certain people -special people -can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong.”

“And I’m guessing the glass windows randomly exploding around me when I’m awake have something to do with you too?”

“I made several unsuccessful attempts to communicate before this, yes.”

 Dean huffs at him.

“Well thanks for the little epilepsy tour. Lower the volume next time. You know my family thinks I’m losing my grip now? They don’t even want to mention the word “Hell” around me anymore. Plus it’s not fun finding out I pissed the bed at near 30.”

“My apologies. I had developed theories about what kind of, uh, consequences this would entail.”

“Theories?” Dean repeats, already worn out from talking to this dude.

He got enough of entitled nerd hypotheses from Sam when he was awake. Now his subconscious had to go and construct someone who looks like he just stepped out of a Comic-Con with his character stats on business cards. Complete with overly intense role-playing that made involuntary shivers run through him.

Dean’s brain takes a momentary step back, however, when he replays their conversation.

“Hold on, you said ‘vessel.’ You’re possessing some poor bastard?”

~~~

Sam comes up to him, sweaty and breathing hard.

“Dean?” he prods his shoulder. “Dean!”

“Sam?”

“What are you doing?”

Dean looks around him, and notices he’s carrying a flashlight.

“I don’t know.” He wiggles it around a little bit, wondering if he’s supposed to be looking for something. The flashlight is on. He looks back at Sam.

“Are you….okay?” Sam’s voice is weird.

“I don’t know. I feel weird.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah.” He goes back to examining the flashlight.

“Where did you go? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Dean looks around himself again.

“I don’t know, I was just…. what was I doing again?”

“Do you know your name?” Sam sounds serious, so Dean tries to concentrate.

“Dean. Winchester.”

“And do you know where you are?”

“In a… room? We were looking for something.” His eyes dart all around the room and he almost drops the flashlight before looking up at Sam. “Ghosts. We were looking for ghosts.”

“Yeah.”

He rubs his temple. “I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s okay.”

“What happened?”

“Well I went to my end of the house looking for the locket, like we were supposed to, and I found the ghosts guarding it. I took care of them though.”

He says all this very long-winded and Dean barely notices the cut over his left eye.

“Holy shit, are you okay?”

“Yeah Dean, I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. My head hurts.”

“Did you fall or anything? I came in here and you were just wandering around.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Then he looks at Sam. “Did you find the ghosts?”

~

He pauses with his hand on the door handle, but he doesn’t open it. He focuses his attention suddenly on a loose thread on his cuff.

“Dean?” he turns to look at the voice. It’s his brother. How did he get here?

“Sam?”

“What are you doing? What’s wrong?” he feels the cool of the metal door handle under his fingers.

“I don’t know. What was I doing?”

“You were gonna go inside to the morgue… and I was gonna go to interview Mrs. Pierce.”

“Right… I was, um..” he trails off, and runs his tongue over his lips.

“Dean?”

He blinks into the silence a few times. Sam asks him a few more questions, concerned.

“I feel weird, Sammy.”

~

They get wind of a rash of people turning up missing alongside the same stretch of highway in rural Utah. Their belongings were still in their cars, but police reports state that the doors were all thrown wide open and the car batteries were dead. As if drained or left running for a long time before they were discovered.

Officials think it’s a case of hikers wandering off without proper equipment or enough water, or even stopping to pee before getting mauled by wild animals. But they felt the need to include the fact that nothing was taken from the vehicles, and no remains were found in the area (slight blood spatter across the driver’s side hood of one jeep, but nothing else).

Also it’s rural Utah. Not the dizzying sandstone towers of Moab or a more passably exciting city like Salt Lake. Just boring old Mormon country, Utah.

Dean is automatically suspicious.

Once they get into town and establish themselves in their usual fed getups, claiming to be tracking down a possible serial kidnapper, their research takes them to the home of one of the creepiest clichés about polygamist cults they’ve ever seen.

The children are numerous and silent, as are the wives. Dean sends Sam a pointed look and they both pretend to drink their offered tea and immediately set their saucers back down on the coffee table.

No one has seen or heard anything about the missing motorists, even though the stretch of highway cuts through the southern part of their property 5 miles away. The husband, or Patriarch, as he’s known, chuckles through yellowed teeth at their questions of if they ever had the missing people turn up at their door for help. He just pats the 12-gauge shotgun at his side and makes it clear how they’d treat “trespassers.”

It sends a shudder through Dean that he only lets out when they’re back in the safety of the car and leaving the compound in their dust.

They both agree the house is at the forefront of the highway’s problems, but with no witnesses to contact, they reach a dead end.

It isn’t until a couple nights later when they’re poring through books from the local library for town history, when they hear the police all in an uproar over the radio. One of the officers apparently got the shit scared out of them when an apparition of a woman in a dirty dress appeared in the middle of the road, then disappeared right before they could run over the _actual_ body of a woman with a gunshot wound to her back.

Sam and Dean get there right as they’re loading the corpse into the van for the morgue. When they take a look at her face, an unseasonable chill hits them as they recognize the face of one of the youngest brides, specifically the one who had given them tea.

As they’re standing there and looking her over, something suddenly strikes Dean as familiar. While Sam takes a moment to ask the coroner for more detail, Dean reaches into his pocket for the crumpled up piece of paper he forgot he put there. With dawning horror, he remembers feeling the small piece of paper slide between their hands as the girl had offered him his tea. He must have placed it in his pocket without reading it and forgot about it.

His hands shake as Sam comes back just in time to see him smooth out and unfold the paper, rough as parchment and no bigger than a business card.

Two words: HELP ME.

The bottom drops out of his stomach and Sam asks where the fuck did he get that. He’s at a complete loss for words and babbles his way through trying to explain how overwhelmed he was by the creep factor of the whole house, thinking they were going to be poisoned and shit. He didn’t even remember physically walking to the car from the house.

Then he tells Sam he’s not entirely sure if he got the paper from her at the house, or if he found it when they just examined her body.

Sam looks very sad and very unprofessional right now, so Dean is all but shoved bodily towards the Impala. When they get in, Sam gives him one of the most distraught and disappointed faces he can ever remember getting from him. It hurts and he wants so bad to start an argument to defend himself, but Sam cuts him off and says firmly that they need to focus on the job.

They finally get the highway safety reports back, dating back 40 years. Animal collisions, repaired mile markers, brush fires, the usual. But then they see a vehicular homicide report from 20 years prior done for that same area the officer reported seeing the apparition. The woman killed had been a student from the university in the city, reported missing some months prior.

The driver that had mowed her down? The Patriarch’s first wife, now serving life in prison for manslaughter.

With context clues, they put it together pretty quickly that this is a woman-in-white situation, and her restless spirit is trying to warn travelers about the compound. The husband is killing them before they get too close, a legacy started by him and his first wife, probably.

They’re placing their bets that more murdered girls’ remains are buried somewhere on the property.

They sneak in at the dead of night prepared to dig graves, but it’s a total shitshow. Not only are there no fresh and unmarked graves dotting the land, but Dean realizes he forgot the flashlight he always carries with him. Sam levels him with another disbelieving face right when he feels the barrel of a shotgun against his back.

They’re marched inside the house and the husband laughs through a boastful diatribe of his long history of kidnapping travelling women, and forcing them into servitude and child-bearing. It’s disgusting and makes bile rise up their stomachs, especially when their captor barks for a few of the women to tie them up, and they respond quickly like scared animals.

When the guy gets ahead of himself and starts walking around to taunt them some more, they feel no guilt as they seize the opportunity to kick his legs out from under him. Top-heavy, he falls like a concrete slab and hits his head off the side of a table and goes silent. They leave him on the floor and start rounding up the women to get the police to escort them all home.

One of the women informs Dean that the victims were all buried under the basement of the main house, and just as he starts heading downstairs he hears Sam yell.

He runs back up the steps to the main sitting room, where Sam has just kicked the husband off himself. They thrash around the room and Dean joins in, but the guy refuses to go down a second time. Someone is knocked against an oil lamp and it tips over, igniting first the curtains, then the whole house. Sam is bleeding from a bad cut and is unconscious on the floor, and Dean’s skull is pounding where he’s been thrown behind the couch.

Just as the Patriarch is advancing and Dean’s ears are filled with the muffled crackling of a rapidly spreading fire, there’s an almighty bang and the old man drops to his knees, shocked. He falls face-first onto the floor at Dean’s feet, revealing a gaping hole in the middle of his back and one of the wives standing behind him with the shotgun.

She looks shaken and tear tracks mark her owlish face, so Dean approaches her slowly and gently pries the gun from her hands. He slaps Sam awake and together they get all the women out of the house before the flames consume it.

On the front lawn of the compound, Dean and Sam look back and forth at one another, and Dean mentions a note he just found in his pocket. He tells Sam he thinks it might be from one of the girls they rescued.

~

“I don’t know, Sam. Dean just forgetting and wandering off? Doesn’t sound like him.”

“It’s true. It’s been happening more and more lately. Something’s wrong.”

Something gruff and unintelligible comes from the speaker on Bobby’s end.

“Yeah, last week we were heading through Grants on our way to that Utah job, and he totally spaced out the number of mile markers we’d passed. He thought we were still leaving Albuquerque.”

More unintelligible noise from Bobby and Sam argues with him for a bit before continuing.

“Yeah, I know, I space out on long drives sometimes too, but this was different. He was honestly confused and keeps getting mad about it.”

“So what are you suggesting? Tell him to take it easy for a while?” A chill runs up his spine.

“I don’t know. You know he won’t listen to that. I want to get him to talk to a real doctor at least.”

“He _really_ won’t go for that.”

“I know, but he’s already had 2 seizures and now this flakiness is starting.” Dean thinks _traitor_ before Sam adds “I’m just scared for him.”

“I know you are, son.” He hears Bobby’s tinny sigh over the phone. “We’ll set it up and tell him we’re just takin’ our precautions. If he has a problem with that, he can talk to me.”

“Thanks Bobby.”


	3. CHAPTER THREE

They finagle their way into one of the best neurology offices in the country. In Phoenix. Dean fucking hates Phoenix. Hotter than Hell, and you can quote him on that.

They let him pick his alias though, and he settles on “William ‘Bill’ Armstrong,” because he wants to feel a bit like a punk right now.

They’re going to have to make several follow-up trips back in between hunts for Dean to run through several tests, including an MRI. He grumbles and pouts and bitches to Sam about why it had to be Phoenix, he doesn’t like being tied to one place for the foreseeable future, etc.

Sam just rolls his eyes at him and they both find out the names of different types of seizures.

**~~~**

 “So I have this to look forward to when I go to sleep now?”

Dean is annoyed. They’re in the same barren setting as the first time, only now they’re inside one of the clapboard shacks, with its eerie glow of foreign symbols covering it from prow to stern. The structure moves and shifts as though it was fragile and affected by the raging wind outside, but it was all as artificial and deathly quiet as his companion.

The lack of noise and chaos set his teeth on edge and leaves him with nothing to focus on but the angel.

When he had first surveyed the place, he had found the stark contrast of the glittering sigils on dark wood distracting and even mildly interesting. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, they immediately dimmed to a deep, burnt red on the surface of the rotting planks. Now he could only see the brief flash of lightning outside through the gaps in the ceiling.

The whole time, Castiel stands against one of the walls with his arms crossed, watching him.

“I told you, Heaven has-“

“-Big plans for me,” Dean finishes for him. “Yeah yeah, I know.” He kicks a loose pebble that makes no sound as it hits the wall. “You still haven’t explained exactly what those are yet.”

Castiel doesn’t particularly look like he wants to be there either, but Dean still presses.

“I don’t know how you expect me to go along with any of this. I’m still not sure you’re even real. If you’re all…vesseled up now, why don’t you pop in on Sam and me some time? Set a few things straight.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything. Dean huffs and starts pacing again. Remembering something, he wheels around and faces the angel again.

“Why can’t I remember you anyway? I remember everything from that last dream and everything that happened before. I can even remember not remembering. But the minute I wake up there’s nothing there.” He babbles a bit to himself, but turns to Castiel expectantly.

The angel looks, for the first time, a bit uncomfortable, and Dean latches onto it like a bloodhound to a scent.

“I would wager it has to do with the bond that translated between us when I raised you from Hell. Human souls are ill-equipped-“ Dean scoffs and cuts him off.

“Bullshit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I lie for a living. There’s something you’re not telling me.” The angel narrows his eyes at him. “Maybe start with why you keep coming back, if you’ve done your job already.”

“I’ve told you everything you need to know. I led the charge to rescue you, and was also tasked with your resurrection.”

“Well, stellar job on the execution, but I think you fucked up on the landing there.” Castiel glares, but Dean keeps his tone smooth and steady and finishes by holding up his fingers, “6 out of 10.”

The angel doesn’t ruffle his feathers in an affronted bird-kind of way. In fact, he looks like the furthest thing from a bird, as Dean gets an itch of a fraction of his power tickling all down his back. The wings have started to twitch threateningly in their spreading fan across the space.

As he watches Castiel expand the broad stretch of his chest against his strikingly human form, the lighting from outside dances inside his eyes, and Dean finally feels a bit of fear.

But known for being both reckless and stubborn in the face of danger, Dean opens his mouth against all the warning bells inside his head, although his voice comes out a little breathier than he expected.

“Just admit that you fucked up.”

“I don’t.. _fuck up_.” Castiel growls out every syllable as he steps right into Dean’s space, and Dean finds himself rooted to the spot.

“Angels are warriors of God. I lost 6 of my brothers in the battle to free you from Perdition. You think I’m here to “perch” on your shoulder?” He crowds further in until his face is inches away from Dean’s, and Dean has nowhere to look but the blown pupils of the angel. “You should show me some respect.”

Dean wakes up breathing hard and with a heart rate that could set off an EMF detector. He feels extra justified in barking orders at Sam for the rest of the day but doesn’t know why, and it takes him a long time before he calms down enough to sleep again.

**~~~**

“So get this: focal, or partial seizures can be caused by congenital birth defects, epilepsy, or brain injuries,” he reads aloud from the text on his laptop screen. “They’re called “partial” because they only affect separate lobes, or one hemisphere of the brain at a time.” He hums as he reads a bit to himself. Then, to Dean, “It says symptoms can range anywhere from numbness and tingling to loss of consciousness. Even hallucinations.”

Dean grunts like he’s acknowledging what Sam’s saying, but his tinnitus is back and he’s gripping the steering wheel pretty hard. Sam doesn’t notice and reads on.

He’s gotten annoyingly diligent in his research, picking up neuroscience and concussive theory textbooks wherever he can. It probably earns him way less weird looks than their usual questions about mythology and the occult during their trips to the local bookstores. It’s made Dean sick of the word “focal” though, and in hindsight he almost regrets asking Sam please, dear God, don’t call them “auras” anymore. At least there’d be some variety and he wouldn’t be on edge all the time.

Their quiet moments are usually filled with the tapping of his fingers on a keyboard, or else prattling off some random bit of trivia about brain chemistry. Not like that wasn’t par for the course before, but those were _hunts_.

And he knows Sam is concerned and this is how he processes things, but he doesn’t appreciate feeling like he’s another case. Something they can research, interview, fight, then forget about once he’s been slotted back into being useful again and they can hit the road.

He’s almost expecting to open a page in Dad’s journal and see some cryptic message about the state of his brain and how to cure it.

He used to be the one calling the shots and doing the grunt work, while Sam was delegated to the boring stuff. But now he’s starting to feel like a witness, and everything needing done by him is passed through a filter of Sam or Bobby first, like they don’t trust him all of a sudden.

He hates how often he’s been walking into a room to Sam quickly saying goodbye to whoever he was talking to on the phone and hanging up. He hates how some parts of the “research” Sam keeps for himself, and he’s just there to be the poster child for what could go wrong.

More than that, he hates feeling like they’re right.

Sam had asked him once during his reading if there’ve been moments where he felt like he was losing track of time. Minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? What were they to the decades he had been awake for?

All of a sudden a dim, dusty lightbulb got lit in his brain, and he realized a pattern he should have picked up on ages ago.

If he had been in his right mind, he would have been exactly the right person to point it out. He would have once again been the smart one, making the breakthrough for his little brother, and they could move on. Instead he had to sit and have his symptoms listed out for Sam to nod along to and take notes on. It was so anticlimactic and so much the wrong kind of breakthrough, it made him so very tired.

“The doctor suggested a method of “waking you up” from a focal,” Sam muses again, complete with finger quotes, and Dean debates wrecking the car to slap his brother’s hands back down. “He said that asking you questions to stimulate your brain can jumpstart your memory and bring you out of it faster.”

Dean hums like he cares.

“I tried it and it really does work too.” Sam confirms, mostly to himself, but Dean cracks his neck with how fast he looks at him.

“What do you mean? Since when?”

“The last few times you had a focal? I just asked you stuff like what you saw and who I was, and your whole disorientation phase didn’t take as long after that.”

“I don’t remember having a focal lately.”

He’s dumbfounded, but Sam isn’t paying attention and continues to make scribbles on his notepad.

“Of course you don’t. You never do.”

The air is tense and Dean seethes in the rattling ambience of the car. This is news to him, but Sam is completely nonchalant and scribbles on. Dean feels like the passenger.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

~~~

The road stretched out in front of him, like it was supposed to.  And yet, he didn’t expect it to. It took him a minute to realize the word “road” even existed. Or that now there wasn’t one. He was looking at the road, touching what must have been his foot to the gas pedal. But now all he heard was clicking and hissing, and no more road.

There was a fence now though, one of those chain link deals he used to try and fit his whole hand through as a kid. It was weird how close it was.

Was he still in the car? He felt the sensation of it rolling backwards with him, but he didn’t react and just watched. He watched the fence move further away in the windshield, and heard the metal scraping and groaning, like it was screaming.

The engine was clicking, and he knew it didn’t always do that. Dad never let the car click.

Or was that him now, reaching across the bench seat to grab the gear shift and put it on “P?” He watched hands he didn’t recognize, though they probably could have been his own, turn the engine off and taking the keys out of the ignition.

The clicking slowed and stopped, like it forgot. Just like him.

Dean was in the shit this time, because apparently not only did he leave Sammy behind somewhere, he also fucked up the car somehow? He felt his heart beating so loud and so fast, it drowned out the persistent ringing in his ears he just noticed was there. Everything was too slowly coming back, and he didn’t comprehend it as a bad thing he couldn’t see Dad properly, like looking through the wrong end of a dirty telescope.

But he was still right there in the passenger seat, looking at him and not breathing in the way only ghosts and nightmares do. Dean finally remembers he has hands, and holds them up as he speaks on autopilot.

“M’ sorry, Dad.”

“No, Dean,” is the reply he gets, much rougher and somehow gentler than Dad’s voice. Much more patient, anyway.

“M’ sorry, Dad.”

“You were in an accident, Dean.” Well that explains why he was in the car, but Dean only blinks. A reflex.

A pause where he probably could have said something. Was he dead?

“You don’t seem to have been seriously injured, but your mental awareness is taking some time to recover. I’ve already called Sam, he’s on his way.” calm as anything.

Why was this not affecting him? What’s wrong with him? Where’s Sam?

“You’re not Dad.”

“No, Dean.” A patient reply, but Dean doesn’t think to ask who, how, or why.

There’s just an itch coming through that pegs this deep timbre inside him as the word _familiar_ , and he can feel the heat of _something_ radiating from the passenger seat and through him, settling to pulse like a second heartbeat in the space just above his right ear.

“But I know you.”

“Sometimes, yes.”

Dean doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that, so he turns his gaze away from his flexing fingers to look at the sharpening outlines of the figure next to him. His already shaky peripherals waver and darken what looks like the middle of the day, down to a single focal point: blue.

He remembers hearing lightning strike, but he never saw any. He must have dreamt about it. But who dreams about getting struck by lightning? His left arm tingles.

“Do you know where you are?”

Dean blinks heavily again and refocuses his gaze on what he now knows is the cassette deck, with Zeppelin side 1 ready to go. The radiator is still steaming and hissing weakly.

“The car?” like he isn’t sure.

The not-stranger doesn’t move, doesn’t shift his weight or anything, and Dean doesn’t know if that was the right answer or not. He feels tears erupt from his eyes and fall into his wringing hands, and he suddenly doesn’t want to see anymore.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asks, patient, but Dean can’t stop his tears.

“I’m sorry Dad, I was just-“

“DEAN!”

The driver’s side door gets wrenched open, cutting off whatever he was going to say, and suddenly Sam’s there.

Barrel-chested and heaving, he kneels down and gathers Dean’s face in both hands. He’s urgent and rudimentary in his assessment, but Dean only blinks in a delayed and dazed sort of way up at him, and that causes the worry lines in his brow to deepen.

“Dean, can you hear me? Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

“Sam? Where’s Dad?”

“What? What are you talking abou-“

“Where’s Dad? Oh fuck Sammy, _look at the car._ He’s gonna be so pissed.” Dean suddenly sobs.

Sam regards him with wide eyes and says “Dean, Dad’s not here.”

“No, I was just talking to him.”

And he finally remembers to look over his shoulder into the passenger seat, but it’s empty. When he turns to look at Sam again, he looks even more panicked than Dean feels.

He grips the rough fabric around Sam’s bicep urgently. “It’s okay, Sammy, just run home before he gets back. It’s my fault. I’ll tell ‘im it’s my fault.”

“Dean.” Sam pleads, “what happened?”

“I dunno. I was just going to the store and…” he trails off and belatedly realizes that the ringing in his ears has quieted to an overwhelming throb.

He swallows in the new quiet and wonders why he can taste his heartbeat.

Did Sam ask him a question?

“What?”

“I asked who called me…. some dude called me from your phone and told me you crashed here.” Sam still sounds like he’s talking through an old phonograph, but Dean suddenly snaps to attention because no way did he just hear the word “crash.”

He feels like his joints were soaked in mud overnight, but he’s aware of his knees again as he rubs an incoming case of whiplash in his neck. From what, he doesn’t know. He steps out of the driver’s seat and moves past Sam to the front grill of the car.

Or where it used to be, anyway.

He blinks in disbelief and pure, white-hot rage at the sight of the once pristine chrome hanging almost completely off the fender and dragging into the bushes, in front of what he now sees as a chain-link fence barricading train tracks several feet beyond. They’re in a dead end side-street, and the fence is buckled from what must have been a pretty hefty impact.

Speaking of trains, Dean hears the high-pitched trumpet of one approaching.

Ten seconds later it barrels by, and the heat and proximity of it, along with the ear-splitting screech of its brakes, only fuels his anger. He rounds on his brother.

Who’s looking windswept and gaping at him like the asshole doesn’t know what’s going on.

“What the fuck, Sam?”

~~~

 “So what, you’re saying I’m benched? I can’t drive my own goddamn car anymore?”

“Dean, you had a seizure at the wheel! You almost ran into a train!”

“But I didn’t? There was a fence.”

“Which you nearly folded over the hood.”

“Which, again, I didn’t. It’s not that big a deal.” Sam gapes at him, incredulous. “And I can find the parts to get Baby fixed up in no time. You’ve done worse damage to her before!”

“That’s not the point!”

“Then what is it?”

“There’s the mood swings, the absent-mindedness…. you’re forgetting shit you used to have down pat.” He starts to tap a list off his fingers, and Dean wants to hit him.

“It’s been a rough year, Sam.”

“And then there’s the spacing out moments. Half the time you’re so checked out it takes you 5 minutes to remember where you’re at.”

“Well I’m lucky if I even get that long to think anymore, since you’ve been on my ass so much lately.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I! Even Dad wasn’t as nosey as you.” Sam fumes.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just saying, can’t a guy get some peace around here?”

“Not when you’ve been acting like some kind of twitchy head case and almost kill yourself just walking out the door.”

“You know what, fuck you-“

“Boys. That’s enough.”

Sam and Dean slump their shoulders, contrite. They glare daggers at each other across Bobby, who’s been leaning, arms folded, against the wall between their two beds. One furtive glance at his hard scowl is enough to take the remaining wind out of their sails though, and they both duck their heads and keep to their respective sides. He eyes them suspiciously for another beat before he starts.

“Sam needs to calm down, but he’s right, Dean. Not everything’s been kosher for you. I know you like to keep busy, but lately you’ve gotten… sloppy.” He waves away the knee-jerk protest Dean looks like he wants to make and adds, “we’re worried about you, son.”

Sam doesn’t wear the face of someone who’s won anything, but he nods grimly in agreement with the old man. Dean rubs at the back of his neck, trying the casual approach again.

“I don’t know, Bobby. I really don’t think it’s that big a deal. It was one accident.”

“Yeah, _this_ time. But what happens when you’re in the middle of a case? We ain’t exactly got a magical cure lying around if something goes south.” Bobby says, but what Dean hears is _you,_ and he’s put on the defensive again.

_What happens if you check out and get yourself killed. Like a dumbass rookie._

Dean squares his jaw.

“That won’t happen.”

“How can you be so sure?” Sam pipes up. His voice has gone soft, like the way it does when he’s trying to be the good cop to Dean or Bobby’s bad cop, his ire from a minute ago forgotten.

Dean doesn’t like feeling like he’s being talked off a ledge here, especially since he’s still running on a low-level amount of shame at the fact that he did very much wreck his own car during one of those little “focal” seizures.

“We let it go the first couple times this happened. We thought you were dealing with a lot, having just come back from the dead and all. We thought everything was way too fresh for you and we didn’t wanna push it.”

“But it’s been months, Dean,” Sam finishes. “We’re starting to set our watches by how often it’s happening now.”

It’s too much for him to process, and he hangs his head between his knees. Everything’s slowly being taken away from him, and he’s not even dead anymore.

He always thought that when the time came, he’d have a say in it. To punch his foot to the floor and sail off that cliff himself. It’s different when it’s an idle roll down a steep hill and he’s scrabbling to remember where the brake’s at.

“I just… I can’t. After all this time, this _can’t_ be the thing that benches me.”

“What do you mean?” Bobby and Sam say together as they audibly square their shoulders.

“I thought I’d be dead long before I became a fucking vegetable.”

He’s looking at the floor when he says it, but he just knows they both trade worried glances. It’s Bobby who speaks first.

“Calm down, we don’t even know anything yet.”

“Yeah, this could be temporary, and you’ll be back in the game in no time.”

As much as he wants to believe them, Dean reflexively lets out a huff and raises his head to look at them. They both have their game faces on, and small comfort that it is, he’s not allowing himself to be totally hopeful.

“How?”

“We don’t know.” Dean looks to his brother like _you’re not helping._ “People have survived brain… things before.” he adds, but Dean’s not convinced.

“Yeah. For all you know it could have been one too many tackles through a china cabinet, and you just need to take it easy for a while until it heals.”

“Bobby’s right, Dean. Plus, it’s not like you’ve slowed down any since you crawled out of the grave and everything. Or ever. This could be a nice break for you.”

“But when have I ever been the type to just sit back and eat Haagen Dazs while people are getting ripped apart?” Dean argues, but he gets the feeling he’s already lost.

“Me and Bobby are here. We can help. We can do the heavy lifting.” At a look from Bobby, Sam quickly corrects himself, “ _I_ can do the heavy lifting.”

“You can run research and phones, and we can ask other hunters if we really need the help.”

“And I’ve hunted by myself before. We’re more than prepared for anything we find.” That doesn’t exactly make him feel better, but Dean feels the fight steadily being pulled out of him.

“I still don’t like it.” he adds petulantly.

“I can check in on you boys from time to time, and you call me as often as you can if anything changes.”

Bobby talks, more to Sam, as though the conversation is already over and he didn’t hear Dean’s comment. After a beat, he looks back down at him and he softens just a bit, releasing some of the grizzled lines around his eyes. His mouth ticks up slightly at one corner before getting lost in his beard. It’s crooked and comforting in a way only Bobby’s ever been able to pull off.

Despite the fact that Dean’s still feeling like the old family dog being taken out to the woods to get shot.

“We’ll ask around and look into things, and go from there.” He respects the old man, but Dean takes a second to roll his eyes.

“That’s a lot of hypotheticals to be throwing around this far in, Coach.”

This time Bobby is the one to roll his eyes and give him his patented scowl.

“Just don’t start writing out your will yet, idjit.”

Sam claps him solidly on the shoulder and smiles faintly.

“We’ll get through it, Dean. We always do.”

**~~~**

****

 “I never said thank you, did I?”

They’re sitting amongst the cobwebs covering the steps in Bobby’s basement. Dean’s nursing a couple fingers of whiskey. He knows it’s not real, but the motion and the dusty setting soothes him somehow. Cas is sitting in an old metal chair across from him that doesn’t creak here.

It’s lacking that warmth and something else about Bobby’s that makes it truly comforting for him, but he appreciates the illusion in any case.

“It was no trouble, Dean. I hardly did anything.”

“No, you did. You saved my life.”  

“But I’ve already saved your life, when I dragged you out of hell.” Cas ticks his head to the side and looks like he’s genuinely confused, and Dean has to keep from rolling his eyes.

_I’m trying to have a moment here, damnit._

“Fuck, you know what I mean. I probably would have gotten pulverized by that train if it weren’t for you.” He exhales a long-suffering sigh, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They settle in the eerie silence, with Dean not-drinking his not-real whiskey, and Cas watching him not-drinking his not-real whiskey. Cas seems content to sit here like this forever, observing Dean like some kind of curious alien, which, for all intents and purposes, he kind of is. Dean feels a prickle of apprehension slide over him out of habit, but it’s currently taking a back seat and he can’t bring himself to care about weird angels.

He still has that lingering curiosity himself in the back of his mind too, he knows. Now that he apparently has one of the oldest beings in existence making frequent house calls. Or dream calls. Whatever.

There are so many questions he could ask, about Heaven, Hell, what it all means. Where his mom is, how many times his dad tried crawling out of Hell himself, if Sammy really was damned. But right now he feels so selfish. He only thinks of himself, and what he would do.

“You know… they said they don’t want me driving for a while. At least until they figure this thing out.”

“Yes.”

“And they want me on “light duty” too. Whatever the hell that means.”

He takes Cas’ silence as an acknowledgement and continues, “That’s the thing that sucks the most about this. The choice. I always thought I’d have one, you know? Even after Dad and the hunting, what I was trained to do my whole life. I had no say in that, but I’d have a say in how I’d use it at least.”

Cas merely sits ramrod straight and listens.“Back when Dad first gave her to me -the car -I knew what she meant. Sammy never did. As soon as we stopped some place, he was out like a shot to go find somewhere else, but I stayed put. If I ever needed somewhere to go, an escape plan, or just to drive, she was there. She was my choice. She was my freedom.”

“But from what I understand, cars are relatively easy to fix, provided you have the right parts and knowledge to do so.” He sounds confused again.

“But that’s just it, Cas! I can find all the parts for her, spend my time fixing her up, and get her looking prettier than before. And I have. I just –I’m still gonna have to hand the keys to Sam afterwards.”

He takes another drink in the silence, only belatedly realizing he’d been referring to the angel as “Cas” in his mind for some time, rather than Castiel. He didn’t seem to notice or mind though, and just observes Dean in the silent moments that stack up between them.

“You don’t like being in the passenger seat.”

“I don’t like not being in control. Of my car. My life. My mind.” he looks at Cas then. “it scares me, man.”

“I’m sorry Dean.” He looks away.

Cas folds one hand over the other and leans forward in his seat. A human gesture. He furrows his brow and thinks a bit before speaking.

“I was raised to follow my Father as well. All angels are created to do so. Absolutely, without question. And he was not an attentive Father, by any means. I too, often went many many years without seeing him.”

Dean raises his head to look at him. For a second, he tricks himself into thinking this is just another dude sharing stories of his absent father. Never mind the fact that Cas’ wings are draped lazily over the chair and brushing the floor.

“We were created and implemented with a very specific purpose. Some were guardians, others ministers. I was a soldier. My objectives were clear, and I never wavered. It was very limiting, as you can imagine.” Dean nods and he continues.

“But I never considered anything else. Even with my connection to the Host: thousands of angels all connected, everywhere. Talking, singing, praying…. rejoicing. It can get lonely, though we were not created to feel loneliness or fear. I often feared what I would do if I lost that connection, or if I was suddenly unable to reach my brothers and sisters.”

“So how would you deal with that? If you lost your… abilities? Your freedom?”

The angel takes a moment to consider.

“I suppose I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“Sounds awfully human, Cas.” He smirks at him and gets another head tilt and confused squint in return, but doesn’t bothering elaborating again.

There’s a beat that passes between them, following somewhere along the lines of Cas’ seemingly innocent ignorance, all the way to the sudden outcrop of fond solidarity Dean finds himself feeling. It’s too new and too strange, and Dean shakes his head to clear any trailing off thoughts he can bring up about it.

“Well anyway, I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.”

He stands up to wipe his hands on his jeans out of habit. Cas raises to stand with him, only a few feet away on the landing.

“A more convenient option, perhaps?” Dean rolls his eyes.

“Yeah you’re right, talking to my dreamed-up imaginary friend is _way_ better than talking to my real life brother or something.” He sees the corner of Cas’ ever-present stoicism tick up in a raised eyebrow.

“Though I assure you I am not imaginary, I agree.”

The Freudian slip of the word “friend” hangs unspoken in the air, but neither acknowledges it.

“Makes me sound even more insane, huh?”

“That depends on how much you rely on what others think of you, Dean.”

“Touché.”


	4. CHAPTER FOUR

Dean hated boxes, period. He never admitted it to Sam, because becoming claustrophobic after a childhood spent in a car is the oldest cliché in the book, and he would never hear the end of Sam’s self-righteous psychoanalysis bullshit.

So no, he was not claustrophobic. He just hated boxes.

From the literal big, cheap cardboard boxes they had to fish out of dumpsters sometimes, to the dusty little velvet ring box he found in the Impala’s glove compartment when he was ten. All the way back to the symbolic ones that showed him _exactly_ what the world thought of his thin teenage shoulders swimming in an old military jacket. Dean hated them.

Boxes meant moving and uprooting, gathering everything about your surprisingly pathetic little life ( _and who were you really kidding that you thought it was going to last this time?_ ), and relocating it to an even smaller surprisingly pathetic little space for who knows how long.

Everything in a box just means it’s easier for it to be misplaced or stolen, or burned.

Dean lived his whole life unconsciously avoiding boxes, like the very idea made him uneasy and unfulfilled, but he could never put his finger on a tangible reason for the tight set and pinch between his shoulder blades. Plus, the concept was just too stupid to ever voice out loud. Dean Winchester, solid B student in all things nightmare-killing, afraid of _boxes_? A reality of his life had been around, on top of, and set inside pathetic little boxes, so he could at least pride himself on being the fastest at getting his shit together in one. Or lift multiple boxes at once, if he had to.

As much as Dean hated boxes and all the metaphors he could pull out of his ass during the quiet moments, he quite plainly, literally, hated having his non-metaphorical ass stuffed into one. It didn’t happen often, but even one case of the clap can make one pay more attention to try and avoid it in the future.

And crawling out of his own grave had been no picnic, what with the flashbacks and trauma and all that, but nothing filled Dean with more anxiety, humiliation, and dread in the waking and non-monster world, presently, than the thought of getting an MRI.

In his mind he assumed it to be much like what he had seen in TV and movies, no metal anything, put on this hospital gown, wear this Magneto helmet, lay in that Star Trek tube, and DON’T. MOVE. And it very much was like that, but he realized he now had no scale of measuring time anymore.

Ever since this stupid thing started happening with his brain, he didn’t trust whether he had been staring at that same spot for 30 seconds or 2 hours. Sam had to prod or shake him sometimes, and he felt like he was falling asleep all over the place, but somehow still awake.

His hearing seemed fucked up too. He’d start at the beginning of an album and get really into the song, and then he’d blink or “wake up” and be somewhere in the middle with a headache and no idea what day it was.

When he tried explaining once in a fit of lucid confusion, Sam had said it sounded like that fixed time sensation of being on a treadmill. Truly not knowing how long a minute was until you were gasping for each breath while your chest was on fire, your knees and joints grinding themselves into powder, but still trying to reach for whatever the fuck “stamina” means, and pushing it all to hold out for just a little longer. Or like those professional bullriders who could precisely time 8 seconds before they could let go, to possibly get thrown off, kicked, or trampled to death.

Or like, 40 years in Hell.

Sam wasn’t allowed past the waiting room, so Dean was left to shuffle in his socks and an overlarge gown behind a short, redheaded radiology tech in dark purple lipstick, as she led the way to the scanning room. There he was greeted by another, still shorter, radiology tech with chestnut hair named Holly, who was all business.

He knew this because she gave him a disapproving and unamused eyebrow (the kind that would make Sammy proud), the minute he saw her nametag and asked her if she was the same Holly from “Holly Rock” (“Really? Sheila E? Prince? _Nothing_?”). He deflated and let her continue, his eyes on the floor.

He still felt the scrutiny of that eyebrow as she assessed him and confirmed the date of birth on his wristband. Which, of course, he got wrong, rookie mistake, but he tried not to panic about it, oddly already feeling like he was in enough hot water.

“March 24th, or January?”

“March, sorry. Yeah, definitely March. Sorry, brain issues, you know? Memory’s shitty” he tapped one finger to the side of his head for emphasis, and Holly nodded in understanding.

“That’s okay. Did they explain to you how this is going to work?” _Probably, but fuck if I remember_. Dean grunted in agreement.

“Are you claustrophobic at all?” _That depends, coffins or cages?_

“Not that I know of.”

She goes on to explain the series of scans he’s about to go through, all while directing him to the narrow table attached to what looks like a space sarcophagus. Dean swallows and nods along, already feeling sweat on his lower back where he has his gown bunched in his hands.

He casts his eyes around the room, taking in the uniform shelves and too-clean walls. The longer he stares at one corner of the room, the more the edges start to shift and slide around, almost as if he’s his own character in a video game building up to a boss battle. But he’s still unprepared and flat-footed on the hospital floor.

Though Holly’s voice is pleasant, he feels himself slipping further and starting to tune her spiel out in growing anticipation and regret.

He feels like a child. Hell he probably looks like one, with the way he’s standing there in his socks and underwear, clutching his gown like it’s his tether to reality.

“At about ¾ of the way through, we’ll get you back out so we can inject the contrast. The whole process is going to take about 45 minutes. You’re not allergic to contrast, are you?”

At that she turns to regard Dean with another eyebrow, which suddenly morphs into a concerned expression as she takes in his probably very panicked gaze, now dramatic and unfocused on the floor just to the left of the MRI machine since the word “inject.”

He’s had pretty recent and vivid experiences with all kinds of bleeding for the cause: shooting, stabbing, ripping, clawing, sewing himself and Sammy up with dental floss. Whether in small or hand-shakingly large amounts, his blood was incorporated in some form across the dirt, asphalt, and grime of almost all 50 states by now.

But this, somehow. Needles, injections. Ever since he was a kid and Dad told him exactly how to relax and breathe through the first initial pain. It was always too much, too invasive, to just sit (or lie there, as was now going to be the case, apparently) while faceless ( _always faceless_ ) people in dirty lab coats prodded and assessed, and _injected_ he-didn’t-know-what and he’d feel it explode in his heart seconds later-

“No, no I’m not. I don’t think,” he pauses to shake himself, “let’s get this over with.”

_Get a fucking grip, Winchester._

Holly and the other tech have him lie down and set him up with little foam ear plugs and his “Magneto helmet,” which just barely fit around his head. In fact, it left his lips jammed up against the plastic apparatus (he put his faith in God that it was all sanitized), and with about a 5-inch square window from which to look out of.

He felt like he was kissing a Judas hole at the weirdest kind of space speakeasy.

Whether they noticed how uncomfortable he was, or they were just used to this kind of stiff-backed maneuvering they were having to do with his large frame, the techs were still professional and tender with their necessary and literal manhandling.

Dean didn’t know how much he appreciated it until he felt a small hand gently place a call button into his own that were crossed over his stomach, and the top portion of Holly’s face appeared in his 5-inch view.

“Mr. Armstrong? You let us know if you need anything, okay?”

Dean did his best to nod and not jostle their rigorous setup, and finally just gave a very weak thumbs-up instead. As he felt the table slide into the giant machine’s tube, it compressed his arms even tighter into himself. He exhaled harshly through his nose, laced his fingers together over his call button and tried not to think of the dead.

~~~

His eyelids were crusted over with blood and grime, but then they weren’t.

He was ascending, supine, torso-first into the blinding supernova of light above, his arms and legs dangling heavily and freely underneath him. And then he wasn’t.

Disjointed voices were all around him and hushing into his eardrums, and swirling inside his mind like a liquid and more urgent form of fog. And then they weren’t.

It was quiet.

The loudest sound that broke into the space was the first breath he remembered taking not out of pain or exertion, and the immediate coughing fit that followed. The air was stagnant and disused, like he expected he was.

It was then that he realized he was alone, horizontal, in a coffin.

His coffin, he assumed, as it had been a while since he was flung back into someone else’s coffin during a fight. Sam was usually not that far behind though, ready to heave the lid back open and give him a hand back out.

But there was no one here. Was Sam in his own coffin?

Panic overtook him and he blew through every single one of his survival instincts at the thought of Sam being in a similar setup. Or worse.

He dug around in his pockets, thankful they went the Egyptian route and buried him with all his shit. Why it wasn’t the usual pyre of a hunter’s funeral was a question for another time.

He flicked open his Zippo and used the weak flame to deplete his precious oxygen and confirm that yep, he was indeed inside a coffin. There was the wood frame inches from his face, and a solid few all around his body for him to barely move. They clearly hadn’t designed this with the _intention_ for him to be able to move in it, but still. The cramped and enclosed effect was firmly established, along with his urgency to get the fuck out.

As he tensed his atrophied muscles and fought through the cramps and the dirt, the only thought in his mind was keeping his eyes closed until he reached the surface.

One foot, exhaled inside his t-shirt.

Two feet, the pebbles and dirt scraped at his knuckles and stung the open flesh, but he ignored it.

Three feet, he pushed with his feet and his quads screamed at him.

Four feet, momentary panic that he was going the wrong way, but he kept digging.

Five feet, he remembered to keep breathing through his nose. The earth was relentless in trying to push his shirt from over his face.

Six feet, he wanted so badly to rub the tears from his eyes.

He almost tore the tendons in his shoulder when he broke the surface and got ahead of himself. He tried lifting his entire bottom half still stuck in the ground before he thought to kick with his feet.

He couldn’t even open his eyes for the first five minutes he lay there on his back. Not wanting to confirm anything else was wrong with him just yet, just spreading his hands to the sky and so overwhelmed he couldn’t cry anymore.

Then he remembered Sam and stood up, and started walking.

**~~~**

****

That fixed-time phenomenon is a bitch, he decides.

During a hunt, forty-five minutes was nothing in the span of prep, research, stakeout, interviews, the inevitable “shit hitting the fan” moments of the ensuing fight, and the post-carnage clean-up and bail. Most good movies ran 3 times that length and he never bat an eye. Hell, even if he wanted a good cuddle after sex that was more than enough time, and motels charged by the _hour._

Forty-five minutes was nothing. “Kashmir” and any random Metallica guitar solo, and he was halfway there.

As he was picking through selections in his entire catalogue and testing them out, he started to simultaneously congratulate and berate himself on how well he was settling in. It was a lot easier than he thought, and he felt stupid for having made such a big deal over almost nothing. The cords were unwinding from his back, and his heartrate was starting to become less audible. He could pull through this, and _surely_ it had been at least 10 minutes.

Without warning, the other tech’s voice comes over the intercom and nearly makes him jump out of his skin.

“The scans are going to start now, Mr. Armstrong.” she chirps, and after noticing his violent reaction, she adds urgently “Sorry! Please try not to move.”

Dean wonders if rolling his eyes counts.

Right then another, more automated female voice sounds seemingly all around him in the chamber, and announces in a tone he is positive he will quickly become annoyed with, “The next scan will last approximately three minutes.”

_For English, press 1….para Español, marke numero dos…._

His body is once again a tense line from his clenched jaw to his curled toes, and he has a feeling he’ll be sore later. He exhales through his nose and tries to count his seconds in Mississippis.

At 7 Mississippi, a series of buzzing cuts through the silence like an air raid and ends in a crescendo that leaves his ears ringing, even with the ear plugs. He sends a silent thank you to the techs for their foresight, and wonders how loud it would have been without them.

He tries to calm his heart rate as each high-pitched buzz rattles his skull like a dying alarm.

Shame briefly colors him as he remembers asking Holly if there would be flashing lights inside the tube, like in the movies, because if he was now “a seizure risk” he needed to have his bases covered.

He felt stupid, sure she was going to give him one of her perfectly arched eyebrows or worse, laugh at him for being such a baby. But she only reassured him there wouldn’t be and that he was free to fall asleep if he wanted.

Well he definitely wanted to, and definitely had hoped to.

Instead he lies there sweaty and more alert than he could ever remember being, desperate to find a rhythm to the discord setting up camp in his mind. To use it, like he always has. Find his own comfort in the chaos that kept most sane people up at night.

The deafening pitch of recycled classic rock songs from the cassette deck that became his lullaby. The dim glare of a shitty motel TV that was his nightlight. And the only caresses that ever made him feel the most safe and secure, that came in the terrified grasps of strangers when he put a bullet or a knife in their worst day.

He wished hubris was sustainable, especially in moments like these. His bravado and extensive resume he’d been building over the years on how _not_ to be a victim was now useless.

Now he was dependent and boring and left to waste away in padded hospital beds and loud, isolated metal tubes, while Sam got to live out the excitement of the rest of the world without him.

And even though he knew his brother would never just hit the road and leave him to die, as well as the countless occasions when he had tried to drill it into his head to do just that, a part of him was still annoyed. He wanted him to live his own life, but he felt a little bitter at how well Sam had jumped into his role as his unofficial nursemaid.

He had already tried to do the noble thing and make Sam promise to not stick his own neck trying to fix him, and he even prepared a script (that they had used before, in fact) for the inevitable pushback.  After all, what did _lore_ say to do when your own brain attacked you for no reason, barring curses or creatures?

What he didn’t count on, however, was Sam being okay with everything he wasn’t okay with, and just doing the job without his big brother there to tell him what to do. He thrived, as a matter of fact. Dean apparently had raised him a little too well, but it wasn’t pride he was feeling.

It’s huge and emasculating and rears at his insides way more effectively than pride ever did.

As he lies there, he almost wishes this wasn’t a normal, boring hospital, and instead was a cover for something bigger and darker. Like organ-harvesting cannibals. At least he would have something to fight.

Their history would certainly justify something fucked up going on below the surface, so he knew he wasn’t being delusional. Hospitals and morgues were always the first places they visited during a hunt, so why wouldn’t this be ground zero for something else too?

If he really focused his rage, he can time the quiet moments in the room with the expectation for something unseen to grab his ankle, and he prepares himself.

Without his permission, a whole slideshow of images plays across his mind, like a worst-case-scenario situation. _A bony, rotting hand wrapping itself firmly around the thinnest part of his appendages and yanking him out. The whole machine being crashed into and flipped over on itself, with him still inside. Something cold and unseen slithering up his prone body and coming to rest and look directly in his line of vision. Stringy hair, black teeth, and empty, laughing eyes._

His knuckles itch with anticipation, and he knows his heartrate is matching. He tries opening his eyes to clear them in case he comes out and needs to find a weapon quickly, but all he sees is the curved off-white surface of the plastic chamber a foot above him. That sight, more than anything, makes him pause in his plan to panic.

_What if you can’t get out?_

He imagines trying to work the helmet apparatus off himself, and having to quickly and awkwardly crawl out feet first. He would be completely vulnerable to grabbing and/or ripping attacks and could easily be maimed enough to not escape by himself.

That’s if the techs aren’t quick enough to get him out first, which, he gets it. For some people it’s every man for himself.

He doesn’t know if they have anything useful for fighting in here, especially with the no metal rule. His crowbar, his and Sam’s guns, all the iron rounds are in the car. These hospitals are always known for their vengeful spirits. And he’s still stuck, with no way to call Sam.

_What if it gets the techs first?_

Holly. She’s small but she looks strong. He doesn’t know if she has a family. He’s had enough of a conversation with her to know she can take care of herself, but he still doesn’t want to know what her screams sound like. He has to get her out.

_What if you can’t save them?_

All the broken bodies of people he let himself fail, their faces tattooed in Dean’s memory as a reminder that he manages to fuck it up somehow. All the times he’s kicked in the door a second too late, been just that much slower and walked into an innocent’s pooling blood and that horrible wet, growling noise, it fills him with heat and adrenaline.

_What if you’re too late already?_

Despite his mouth being largely immobilized against the apparatus around his head, he feels sweat beading his upper lip, and he doesn’t notice the mechanical grating and whirring has stopped until he hears the automated voice announce again, “The next scan will last approximately 3 minutes.”

A second pulse point begins in earnest inside his right eardrum.

_Three minutes. Enough time for someone to bleed out knowing they could have been saved._

He knows he is definitely failing at his immobility test, that’s for damn sure, because his hands won’t stop shaking. If it matters at this point. He doesn’t even count Mississippi seconds to prepare for the next deluge of sound from the machine, because he’s straining to hear the screams.

Screams he thought he had imagined and expected so vividly, they might as well have happened, but there’s only silence and electronic ambience. Silence that could also just be an aftershock of the carnage, like every shell-shocked neighborhood after an invasion of angry and determined teeth.

He suddenly and desperately squeezes the call button clutched between his hands, needing to know who’s all still alive.

When he hears Holly’s confused “Mr. Armstrong?” over the intercom, he almost (okay, probably more than almost) weeps in relief.

After they slide him out of the chamber and Holly sends the other tech to fetch Dean some water while he pukes into the offered trash can, he finds he has no answer to her “Are you alright?”

He can only blink confused tears and slump his shoulders towards the floor, as he feels his adrenaline flood out of him so fast he considers sleeping right there on the tile.

She places a tentative, yet solid hand to the expanse of his trembling back, and he marvels at how easily that grounds him. Her touch is brief but warm where he knows his is sweaty and clammy. She doesn’t seem to mind.

Her voice is all smooth concern when she asks, “Do you need us to get your brother?”

Despite himself, Dean huffs out a wet laugh and rubs his temple with the back of his hand. He hums out a “No.”

The redheaded tech returns with his water, which he accepts with a weak smile and downs it gratefully. She nods and leaves Dean and Holly alone while she goes to shut down and possibly reset everything. Everything he messed up. Again. He just couldn’t seem to stop doing that lately.

He hasn’t looked up from the floor, but he can feel Holly’s gaze and he really wishes she would stop looking at him like that. This was exactly why he hated crying in front of strangers.

He’s surprised to not hear pity or condescension in her tone when she presumes that this is his first time of any kind of procedure.

“M’ not claustrophobic though.” After everything she just witnessed, he still feels the need to defend himself.

“You know it wouldn’t be weird if you were. Most people don’t like it.”

He’s too exhausted right now to argue that he’s not “most people,” so he just hums again in response. There’s a bit of an awkward silence that he doesn’t know how to fill as he sips from his paper cup.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t like the noise either. I don’t know how the patients can stand it. Even with ear plugs.”

He stares at his own, now crumpled and waxy in his palm.

“Have you ever had one of these done?”

“No.”

“But you see it every day.”

“Oh yeah. A lot of people get nervous about it. That’s why we usually offer sedation.”

_Of course._

Such a simple solution, one he and Sam should have considered, but as it was, Dean also knows he didn’t want to risk disorientation any more than he had to.

“Yeah, I, uh… don’t really like that.”

“What, being asleep?” Her tone isn’t judging, only curious, but Dean flounders for a bit.

_Maybe._

“Yeah.” He pauses to shrug it off, “I guess I think too much.”

“Is that what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Being in a tight space, not allowed to move, _on top_ of having nothing to distract you from that awful noise?” She says it so nonchalantly, but Dean is reeling from the obviousness of it all and feeling like a monumental jackass. “Leaves you with way more time to think, especially if you can’t sleep.” she finishes.

He scrubs over his face harshly and drops his head into his hands. He can’t believe he didn’t consider any of it beforehand and just let his imagination take the wheel in what is a calm, routine procedure for everyone else. Just like he always does, he cranked the volume up to ten and drove right into his delusions.

“I’m so fucking stupid.”

 A mantra he repeats in the heat of his worst moments when he can’t look at himself in the mirror for a couple days. Or even when remembering minor mistakes, if he’s being honest.

Holly looks taken aback.

“No you’re not.”

Dean scoffs.

“Really. Look, Bill-“

“Dean.”

“What?”

For the first time in a while, he gets her raised eyebrow again. He hopes that this goes over as him sharing his nickname or something, but his sudden need to be honest with her is overriding his common sense and is probably more shocking to him than it is to her.

“My name. It’s Dean.”

She takes a moment again to consider that, longer than Dean needs to start sweating again, but then she recovers and looks at him even more seriously than before.

“Well, _Dean_... look, you’re not stupid. It’s totally normal. There’s a reason why a lot of people don’t like hospitals. _I_ don’t like them, and I _work_ here.” She talks slowly and deliberately, like she’s waiting for each word to resonate with him, “You’re not stupid.”

“I’m not normal either.”

“But that’s not a crime! So what if you had a completely logical and human reaction to this whole thing? It’s okay to feel that way. It doesn’t make you less of a man or whatever.”

No _suck it up, Dean_ , or _stop being such a pussy_ that he expected to hear, reprimands that have been fading in and out of his conscious thoughts since he was a kid. So faded that he doesn’t remember whether they originated from Dad or himself.

Such a simple question: he’s allowed to _feel_ things?

He had been sneaking tentative and nervous glances at her before, but now he slowly and almost submissively raises his eyes to meet hers.

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely.” She says, no hesitation, so sure, and he finds himself really believing her. Her eyes are a fierce, steel blue shock of déjà vu at the back of his mind, though he can’t figure out why.

He gets the feeling these types of conversations are those she has quite often, if she’s so solid in her mindset. And it’s not that he doesn’t ever like to share _anything_ with his brother, it’s just the fact that it’s very close quarters (more so recently), and Sam can barely ever pry it out of him when he’s not feeling backed into a corner. He ends up being way more emotionally available to connecting with strangers on the virtual guarantee he won’t spend hours on end in a car with them.

With Holly, Dean finds himself suddenly and overwhelmingly jealous of the people in her life who must be the subject of this particular brand of proactive support on a daily basis. She has this firm and calming tone to her voice that leaves him thinking that if he told her he saw the sky as green, she would validate him into believing it himself. He wishes he was more than a passing ship and could hear her story and let her get to know his.

“I’ve had a lot to think about. These days it’s been way more than usual. I’ve seen things and… done things I’m not proud of.”

She sits silent and patient, and nods along.

“I know I’ve helped people too, but the bad stuff, the stuff I fucked up… they never stopped coming. The bad stuff was always worse, and I forgot the good. I forgot -but I pushed through it, told myself I’d deal with it later.”

“And now it’s later.”

_Huh._

“Yeah. It’s fucking weird. I thought I could keep going and trying to distract myself. To keep fighting back all the awful shit in the world and then someday I’d die with at least someone remembering that I fought tooth and nail for them.”

That last bit might have been weird to say, but Holly only nods.

“It’s not stupid to slow down though, Dean. We all need to remember to take care of ourselves too. I still forget sometimes.”

“But you seem fine. You’re here and you do your job.” He has to clarify, because she’s sounding like Sam now.

“Which I wouldn’t be able to do if I stayed home listing all the shit I’m not proud of. It doesn’t help anyone to dwell on what I can’t change.”

_Huh._

He pauses.

“So what do you do?”

She treats it like an important question. She looks to the ceiling and considers for a moment. When she speaks, she sounds like she had practiced this, to herself, in a journal, or in a mirror, and he’s hoping desperately that he remembers this conversation later.

“I tell myself… I’m worth it. I’m worth the love I receive from my husband, from our kids, from my friends. I’ve made mistakes, I know I’m not perfect. But I can’t let those mistakes live inside me and define me. Because it’s what I did as a result of those mistakes that make me a good person.” She looks to Dean, “it’s your desire to be better and your willingness to do something about it.”

He gets the impression she had the kind of life where she could have taken any other path, but chose to improve herself and pass it on to others. He feels a rush of affection for her and offers a sad, private smile.

“I wish I could believe that.”

She rests her hand over one of his and the smile she gives is a small one, but it is genuine and lovely and transforms her whole face, raising her cheekbones and giving her a soft and youthful glow.

“You will.”

He feels like he could someday.

Ten minutes later, after Holly and the redheaded tech, Kirsti (he finally asked her name) get him set up on the table a second time, he feels silly for his overreaction from earlier. But both women only wave off his apologies and are the picture of professionalism once again.

They offer bemused smirks at each other over his answer of “A beer,” when they ask him if he needs anything though, so Dean calls that a win.

Before they fix him into his Magneto helmet, Dean suddenly catches the edge of Holly’s scrub shirt between his fingers to get her attention, and she stops and looks down at him. He resuscitates his bravery to ask if there would be a possibility for them to play some music or something to distract him from the overbearing buzzing noise, both in his brain and outside in the chamber.

He tries not to look so defeated or panicked when she responds that she can’t.

But when she offers to talk to him throughout the scan over the intercom, he feels his chest flutter in gratitude for something he didn’t know he wanted most in the world at this moment. She gives him one of her small, beautiful smiles again and he remembers to breathe.

Once he’s inside and hears the automated announcements, he’s much more prepared for it. Even with the same setup as before, he feels more secure than he’s ever felt in his life, because shortly after the announcements and the buzzing has stopped, he has the melody of Holly to look forward to. As she soothes out words of encouragement, brings up different ideas about what the machine’s sounds resemble, or just tells him about her day, he finds himself starting to drift off.

The last thought he remembers having before the pressure finally relaxes in his forehead and he falls asleep is, _she really does have a nice voice._


	5. CHAPTER FIVE

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. I mean, how can something smaller than a pea be that destructive? Much less hereditary? I never heard Dad say anything weird about any of this.”

_Never mind that Dad never said much of anything that wasn’t an insult or a command, but whatever._

“No, not that,” Cas takes a moment to squint at the “results.” How this dream subconscious logic placed them in Dean’s childhood bedroom he had no idea, but at least it wasn’t that fucking hospital room again.

He might actually throw up. Again.

“I don’t understand how the doctors missed this,” Cas continues. “You can clearly see the mass largely in your temporal lobe, but even with all the advances in human medical science, they completely ignored the portion that hovers in the occipital lobe.”

He puts the paper down and wonders aloud to himself, muttering more about “humans” and “infinitesimal.”

Dean finds the sight of him sitting cross-legged on the floor amongst the teddy bears unnerving and endearing at the same time. When he looks up at Dean sitting on the bed and meets his gaze expectantly, Dean thinks he must have asked him a question. He clears his throat and sits up straighter.

“I don’t fuckin know.” Noncommittal is always the best option.

He had actually started out this dream inside the very same hospital room he had left this morning. He was alone at first, and he felt all the walls he had built up during the waking interaction just drop out of him so suddenly when Cas showed up.

Cas immediately saw the panic in his eyes and asked Dean conversationally what he remembered of his childhood, and the first place Dean described had been this.

_Cavernous malformation._

He had rolled the strange boxy words over in his real and dream mouth to get a feel for them, but it just felt empty. It finally had a name.

 _Step 1: find out what you’re dealing with_. Apparently it had already moved to the next “attack” stage though, and every time the damn thing bled it triggered a seizure. So Dean was left on the defense.

Cas seemed to show little concern for the terminology and didn’t make Dean recount exactly what the doctor had said. Which was a relief in itself, and Dean suspected was also because he already knew the answers to any questions he could possibly have.

He even saw the missing fragment the doctors couldn’t and was now rattling off how damages to the occipital lobe can cause hallucinations, and Dean was only half paying attention.

“Are you alright?” Dean had managed to space out again, and he was pulled back by Cas’ hand on his knee. He had quickly learned from the beginning how Cas was not well-versed in human personal space boundaries, and did his best to educate him a bit, so he knew this gesture was deliberate and comforting. He looked down at the hand and back to his face, which was all big blue eyes and concern, and found he couldn’t lie or shrug off this feeling.

“No? I don’t -I don’t think so.”

Cas removes his hand and continues to watch him in companionable silence, and Dean is laser-focused on his own hands as he tosses his thoughts around. He’s long suspected that Cas had the ability to read his mind if he wanted to, but he never gave any indication of trying. He respected that he gave him time to sort through everything on his own, and let Dean make the choice with what to share.

No one else did that. He was so used to getting blackmailed into sharing his feelings that the relief of no pressure Cas gave him was exhausting in itself. Like a long sleep after a coma. He had to choose to wake back up.

“I’m –I don’t. When the doctor suggested surgery today…. that was honestly the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. And that’s saying something.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. It’s so weird. I’m not used to anything going this slow. Sitting and waiting in hospital rooms, laying in that fucking MRI machine, now waiting for this surgery. I’ve only ever lived fast and died faster.”

“You know,” Cas starts, “the doctor did say surgery was only an option. Not one you have to take, necessarily.”

“But what other option is there? I can’t sit here and take seizure medication for the rest of my life, hearing or reading the news secondhand, sitting behind the phone and _hoping_ this thing doesn’t attack me when no one’s around to pull me back out.”

Cas has no answer, and looks like he’s thinking very hard about something.

“And what if… what if this thing gets worse and I start to _really_ lose my memory? What if I can’t remember my life, or my own family?” he feels something start to close up his throat, but he coughs it away. “I never put much thought into everything I still had left to lose, I guess.”

Cas lets the silence hang between them for a beat before speaking slowly, almost like he’s choosing his words carefully. “You mean you never thought about what exactly you were fighting for?”

Dean takes a moment to consider his old room and decides, “Yeah.”

“When I look into your past, I see nothing but pain, and struggle. A thousand lifetimes’ worth of tragedy that no one human should endure.” He turns the stuffed brown bear over in his hands and looks up at Dean again, “Wouldn’t those be memories you’d rather live without?”

Every time he had been asked this type of question, he never had the higher ground. He’d been tied up, bled out, or otherwise made completely vulnerable to all sorts of self-righteous creatures offering him “freedom” from all the suffering of his sad little existence. All sorts of temptations of bliss, nothingness, or reward from the genie of the week, and he never once thought twice about choosing option “no thanks.”

But this time, he couldn’t hear any high-class manipulation tactics, or feel any of the rote resentment he had come to expect from existential debates, especially from this particular angel. The confused and pleading lilt he left his question on was completely turning Dean’s brain over on itself, until the only option for him was honesty.

“It wasn’t all bad.”

_Mom humming ‘Hey Jude’ into his hair. Playing catch with Dad. Them bringing Sam home from the hospital and cradling his teeny little head in Dean’s lap for the first time. Introducing him to all the good, late night cartoons. Hitting the target on the first try from a hip-draw. Lisa Braeden and her ‘plumeria’ scented lotion the morning he had to leave._

“It’s not always about the pain, Cas. Hell, everything about love involves pain. I just always had to find the love in what I was doing, or else I would’ve gone insane. I survived, I kept fighting, I saved people. I _chose_ to. I don’t want to give that up.”

“You would accept the pain in exchange for the smallest promise of love, or happiness?”

“Every time. It’s all part of the human experience.”

Without breaking his gaze, Cas muses aloud “Your strength and perseverance never cease to amaze me.”

It’s broad enough to leave Dean wondering whether Cas was referring to all of humanity or him, specifically. Nevertheless, he has to fight back the heat that wants to color his face and look away finally.

~~~

He gets used to it. Sort of.

As much as _can_ get used to long hours stretching into long days, with enough blips in his memory to make it all move too fast and too slow at the same time. His ass is sore from riding shotgun with nothing to do or distract him from all the rambling noise setting up camp around him. It was a noise he only ever briefly acknowledged before when he could tune it out with work and music, but now it pattered against the windows and itched inside his ears with consistency.

It was even worse with the medication. The doctors had told him the medication could not totally stop or prevent seizures, just slow them down, and left him wondering what the fucking point was. He had been secretly keeping a mental tally, but Sam had taken to keeping a calendar whenever one of his seizures hit. Though they had assured him that a certain number of focals did not equal a full seizure, he couldn’t help the panic that set in once he realized his and Sam’s numbers didn’t match up.

Because of how frequently he was having them and how long it took to snap him out of one, Sam was hardly ever out of reach these days, both in physical and over-the-phone proximity. Dean had apparently developed enough lucidity over time to now know to call Sam during one of his focals. Like a new instinct or instruction written inside a glass bottle and tossed into the rolling ocean that was his brain.

Him and Bobby had a pretty big argument a while back, when Dean’s focals were becoming an every day incident, and the fear and the pressure of just how much help Dean actually needed got to him. He exploded and said some pretty awful shit about how it “must be nice” to not remember, and how he was having to do all the work now to make up for the “dead weight.”

Dean had stormed out and returned to Bobby reading Sam the riot act, and telling him to “pull his head out of his ass and quit disappearin’ when your brother needs you.”

Sam cooled off only when Bobby offered to be around more so they could all work more closely and no one can feel overwhelmed, and Dean chose to sleep in the car that night.

In his dreams he pushed Baby well past her speed limit down an unending road, with Cas sitting in the dark beside him. When an unseen light source briefly streaked by outside and highlighted the angel’s profile, Dean asked him what it felt like to fly.

~~~

 “You’ll call me if you need anything?”

“I won’t need anything. Just go.”

“I’m serious, Dean.”

“And I’m not a baby. Get the fuck out of here.”

After the door shuts and Dean finds something relatively harmless and satisfying worth flinging across the room in frustration, he reopens his laptop to the page he had bookmarked since this morning. He checks the time. Or yesterday. Whatever.

_Police responded multiple times to shouting coming from a local warehouse, but found one victim exsanguinated and no other evidence of foul play. Authorities report it was likely gang violence, but no additional victims were reported nearby._

Sam is out investigating cattle deaths and possible demon sightings, which was taking him to an overnight stakeout a town over. It was more alone time than he’s had in months, and it gave Dean the incentive to use his “free time” more wisely. The itch was under his skin and giving him bed sores from all the cabin fever he’d been experiencing.

Just one small hunt. A single vampire or a ghoul. No big deal.

He used to be able to tackle these by himself, no problem. Hell, it was a necessity back when Sam skipped off to civilian life for a while. Still, the anticipation of being left alone for more than a few hours was humming inside him and making him giddy with excitement.

It was almost enough to make him not care that Sam had specifically checked his phone to make sure himself and Bobby were on speed dial for Dean’s focals, or that he had confirmed multiple times that he had taken his medicine. _Almost_ enough.

But now he was out and enjoying the unsupervised and open air of a small nondescript town at dusk. So fuck Sam.

He knew exactly where he was going and how to get there, he’d looked it up. And he knew he’d find a way back to the motel room eventually, he’d already planned to frame it in a text to Sam as directions for the pizza guy. He still knew how to do this. He still had hunter’s instincts, after all.

The same instincts that made him feel like he was being watched the minute he stepped foot outside the motel room. He was wary, but he chalked it up to him being paranoid of getting caught, and kept walking.

It seemed like he had only blinked when he was waiting outside the warehouse, and before he knew it, what he thought was a single straggler vampire or ghoul, turned into a gang of 4 werewolves. His brain heated and yelled at him for not doing more research in his eagerness, but he wasn’t really paying attention anymore.

His first thought was to call Sam as he felt the room shifting out of focus, but that wouldn’t make sense. Angry werewolves surrounded him and he needed to fight. He used to be good at fighting. They advanced and he threw a punch. It got someone in the jaw, but he was quickly spun around and thrown to the cement floor. It was so dusty, and there was a cut on his arm that he could see through his jacket sleeve.

He heard the snapping of jaws but felt nothing. Truth be told he couldn’t really see anything either, as his vision was focused everywhere and nowhere. Something grabbed at his leg and he heard a snap. It hurt, maybe.

In all the chaos and noise of the certainty that he was about to die and being passively _very_ okay with it, he registered a fluttering sound of wings.

Howling, yelling, and more chaos surrounded him again, but he blinked and felt it was imperative he focus his vision this time. Laying on his back, he saw bodies flying across the room, and the crash and slump of them hitting the floor.

A face appeared before him, snarling and feral and unrecognizable as human. It then let out a pained howl before its eyes glowed briefly white then dimmed to a charred black. The hand that had been on top of its head was offered to him, and he used it to pull himself up to stand.

This face, he did recognize.

“Cas?” he desperately kept his hold onto his hand.

“Dean. What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know, I…. I feel weird.” Cas only regarded his eyes for a second before he looked all around the room.

“We need to get you out of here.”

Dean allowed himself to be led by the hand out the door and away, but he knew he was safe now. Cas was here. He kept asking him questions though. Questions he had to think about.

“I wanted to kill the monsters for you. Where’s Sam?”

“Sam is not here, you know that, Dean. Do you know where you are?”

More questions, and he only just realized he was still holding the dude’s hand. He abruptly let it go.

“What’s going on? Where the hell is Sam?” the other man was looking aggravated now, and Dean blamed it on some weird fever dream that he had blinked and they were suddenly back in his motel room. He looked around for a weapon.

“Whoa wait, who are you?”

This creepy dude had some intense eye contact, and was now assessing Dean all over, like a human x-ray. If he _was_ human. The doctor mentioned he’d have hallucinations, but damn.

When he had finished his evaluation, he looked into Dean’s eyes and was almost sad.

“You don’t remember me.”

Dean was starting to get angry again.

“Look dude, I don’t know who or _what_ -“

The man sighed and resolutely put two fingers to Dean’s forehead and cut off what he was saying, and everything went black.

Sam asked him later what he did while he was away, as he didn’t receive any calls. Dean said he didn’t know, and must have slept most of the time.

He was accustomed to feeling like he forgot something, but now more than ever it was getting harder to shake. Along with a residual sadness that he felt like it didn’t completely belong to him.

**~~~**

“You were sent to do one job, and one job only, Castiel. Save the Righteous Man from Perdition.”

“Which I have done.”

“Yes, but we never instructed you to… consort with him!” Rachel said, scandalized.

He used to enjoy these briefings between his brothers and sisters. After eons of fighting alongside them as soldier, strategist, then commander, he was both loved and respected. He did not demand or hoard attention, and they were not the group to give it, but he had known he belonged. He had skill and purpose.

Lately however, his connection to humanity had left him with a growing understanding of the word “exhaustion.” He did not require rest or maintenance, but he felt it building and rooting itself deep in the essence of his grace, in great correlation to how long since he had last considered how old he was.

These briefings had begun to feel more like a tribunal. Especially now, with the group of them circled around him with equal looks of stern disapproval.

More and more he wondered about the validity of his duty to service that which did not truly serve. Service of the greater and higher cause was always done without question or hesitation. Outliers were always punished indiscriminately and made examples of, so as to inspire loyalty. Always.

And yet.

Doubt was as foreign a concept to him as compassion, and yet he had experienced the seduction of both through his connection to humanity.

“He is my charge. I am only doing as others have done: serving the Host.” Castiel remained calm, but they were unconvinced.

“Do not presume we are ignorant to your frequent visits.”

“It is not what you think. I am only monitoring his progress after resurrection. And I have concerns.”

“I am sure you do.” Uriel sneered at him. It raised his hackles.

“Frankly, I am surprised no one else has noticed his rapid deterioration. Since it is exactly as I had predicted and advised against.”

“Yes, we all know what objections you raised. They were recorded.”

“And now it’s coming to pass.”

“Heaven’s plan for Dean Winchester is none of your concern.” Naomi cut in calmly, which never failed to aggravate Castiel. Her condescension had been fine-tuned over the millennia.

“And I am supposed to just ignore one of God’s creation right when he needs us most?”

“You had your orders, Castiel. No more, no less.”

If dismissiveness were a commodity, he was certain they would have ruled it a sin.

“Though he was Chosen, he is not one of us, Castiel.” Naomi was without a doubt the fiercest among their order, and her attempts to be gentle were still not to be received unarmed.

“He lived through the flames of Perdition and returned. No mortal can survive with the memories -the corruption -that touches them there.”

“He is human. Corruption lives in his soul.”

Castiel pursed his mouth and addressed each member of the group in turn with a stern eyebrow.

“What would you have had me do? What would _any_ of you have had me do?” he rumbled out, low and challenging. “I led the charge, I fought, I rescued him, I. Rebuilt. Him. I touched the light of his soul and saw its purity. He was cast into Perdition not of his own vice, but _because_ of that purity and desire to save the ones he loves.”

Their gazes drifted back and forth to one another. There’s a crowd of other angels gathering, and they all eye him and murmur amongst themselves. In his fury, Castiel pays them no mind.

After a tense silence, it’s Naomi who speaks first.

“He is only a man.”

“Yes, but he is now a broken man, because of these _orders._ ”

“He is alive, he is with his kin. His struggle gives him purpose, which is what humans crave. He is in the best environment to foster his destiny.”

“Which destiny involves him losing himself? Would he still be the Righteous Man if he is only the shell of one?”

“Your regard for this creature is... very admirable. But we have our orders. We observe. We keep our distance.”

“This fraternization stops now, Castiel.”

~

Cas removes his fingertips from Dean’s forehead and lets his arm drop with an air of resignation between them. The gesture itself was irrelevant, since he could have very well just _shown_ Dean what had happened without all the theatrics. They are inside his head, after all.

He probably felt like a more tactile approach would placate Dean and feel less invasive. He was obviously mistaken.

Dean is surprised when he actually breaks eye contact and steps out of his space like he’s expecting the worst. He can only focus on one thing at a time right now though, so he files that character inconsistency away for later.

“Why did you show me that?”

“I felt you needed to know.” he answers matter-of-factly. It really pisses Dean off sometimes.

In fact, Cas’ little Emmy performance up there was the most he’s ever seen from the guy when the subject of Heaven pops up.

_One thing at a time, Dean._

“Needed to know what, huh? That I wasn’t even rescued because “good things do happen, Dean,” and all that bullshit you were spouting before?”

Castiel stays silent, so Dean just fumes.

“Or that I’m just a toy for you feathery assholes to play around with when you get bored? That all of this shit, all the shit that humanity goes through isn’t important enough for you to use your “divine intervention” and lend a hand? Needed to know WHAT, Cas?” he all but yells at him, already feeling his hands shaking.

“I needed you to see that I’m on your side.”

“Not that much, you’re not.” Cas reels back.

“What do you mean? You saw everything that happened.”

“I saw enough. I saw that you _knew_ what my Hell memories would do to me, and you did it anyway!”

Dean gets back in Castiel’s space and drops his chin to catch his gaze, but Castiel is still avoiding looking at him.

“They were only theories at first-“

“You _knew!_ ”

“I had my orders, Dean. They were absolute.”

“TO HELL WITH YOUR ORDERS!!”

Despite the hazing-out-at -the-edges atmosphere of the motel room dream setting they’re standing in, the air still reverberates with Dean’s shouting. He turns away from Castiel then, looking towards the opposite wall and rubbing his hand over his mouth.

There’s a vague pressure building in the middle of his forehead, and he wonders randomly if punching Cas in his dream would hurt, or wake him up.

“Dean-“ Cas suddenly sounds so desperate, it makes Dean angrier. He levels at him again.

_Fuck the Devil’s Advocate._

“No. No more crap about being a good soldier... It’s about doing what you know is right, and damn the consequences!”

No one says anything for a long moment.

Cas just looks at him with big, sad eyes and a soft set to his mouth. Like his hands are tied. It tugs at Dean’s chest and makes this hot, betrayed feeling that much worse.

Despite himself, he maintains eye contact for longer than is necessary. He’s still fuming, but he speaks again in a much softer tone, voice catching at the end.

“You had the power to heal me the whole time, and you just sat there watching my brain eat itself.”

More sad eyes, and Cas’ brow draws together.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t-I can’t-”

“I thought we were friends, Cas.”

“We _are_. Dean, I-“ he breaks his gaze and looks down again, ashamed.

“Then what? Why?” he keeps looking at him like, _don’t fuck this up, please say the right thing here._ But he feels the tension build between them and he knows he’s not going to.

Cas picks his head back up and his eyes are still sad, but his face is solemn and resolute.

“You have no faith.”

Dean feels every muscle in his body harden, like a splash of cold water got sent through his veins. He’d braced himself, but _damn._

He squares up and leans in until he’s a few inches away from Castiel’s face. Angel or not, he is out of fucks to give if he pisses him off, and he almost doesn’t care if he never sees him again.

Almost.

He’s apparently dead anyway, so he does the only thing he remembers how to do, never go down without a fight.

“If you can’t heal me, or won’t. What use _are_ you?”

Dean snaps his eyes open to the early morning light filtering through the musty motel curtains.

The sun doesn’t look like it’s going to rise for another hour at least, and he hears Sam snoring in the next bed. His head is suddenly spinning in growing confusion and frustration.

As he continues to blink at the glowing window, he tries remembering the dream he was just having, but it’s no use. Something about the deep hue of the sky outside is making this worse. His heart is beating a tattoo against the hand he had idly thrown over his chest, and he rubs the skin over it.

He’s overcome with a sadness that has nothing to do with anything he woke up to, but he feels it deep in the space under his palm.

Did he lose something? Was it important?


	6. CHAPTER SIX

He walked around and surveyed the cluttered room. Among the newspaper clippings papering the walls, there were notes tacked here and there with idle reminders that he knew could only be addressed to him. Sam didn’t forget anything. Sam was Mr. Perfect.

It didn’t matter that he recognized some of the handwriting as his own, he was still annoyed at them all.

Along with the multiple notes for his and Bobby’s numbers, there were also things like “Stay Put,” Will be back at 7” then another tacked to that, “PM.” Lists of common monsters, names of cities, and instructions on how to use the gun that was apparently somewhere in his bag.

His vision swam at the mosaic of colors, which did not get easier to comprehend with the effects of the alcohol.

And he knew he shouldn’t be drinking. The doctors said drinking aggravated his condition.

Well, he was aggravated.

Sam told him he couldn’t drink on the medication.

Sam could go fuck himself.

The liquor store was right across the street, and it hadn’t been that much of a hassle to sneak out after Sam left for some reason or another. The act in itself though, everything it represented. He felt reckless and not just dumb, in a way he hadn’t in forever.

So far he’d been carefully monitored, corralled, and quarantined, and he was fucking sick of it. He glared at the notes, the hasty and disorganized wallpaper, and wanted to tear it all down through sheer force of will alone. He hoped everyone who had a hand in his own personal little cage was feeling his hatred right now.

He was surprised the walls didn’t burst into flames to complete the picture.

He took a swig from the cheapest bottle he could find, and pawed at the notes he just now saw stuck to random items. One marked for “curtain” detached and fluttered to the floor like a whirlybird.

He could practically hear Sam’s voice, _you can’t remember shit but you remember ‘whirlybird?’_

Maybe he should start his own list to pin to Sam’s face some time: Words Dean Remembers.

_Stupid._

He might already be a little out of it, considering it’s been so long since he’s had a drink, his threshold has taken some time to recover.

 _About the only thing that has,_ he thinks bitterly, and takes another swig.

He wished he didn’t have to feel so childish about this, to have to resort to something so clearly destructive. He knew there was only one way this little rebellion of his was going to end, and it was not one he was going to be happy with. The best he could hope for was a fight with Sam. Like the old days.

He was just so exhausted. And mad. Mad at himself for being so exhausted, and allowing himself to be so fragile to get to this point of pure hopelessness and resignation. Despite what everyone kept telling him, all the hopes they kept trying to sing in his ears, he never should have had to be broken and boring like this.

He never should have had to write things down.

There was a fade out, where he thought he just closed his eyes for a second, but then finds himself standing in front of the bathroom mirror. He didn’t remember walking there or putting his bottle down. He didn’t even know where it was or how much was left in it.

 _‘Write it down, keep track of your stuff. It might help you remember things,”_ Sam had said. It seemed tedious at the time, but more and more his lack of follow-up on that idea filled him with regret.

He wished he had a guide for what he had already felt, so he could know what to feel now. What could be new to him in this moment, so he didn’t have to feel this angry and afraid all the time.

That’s the one thing Sam should have made him do. He should have taken stock of everything for him, since Dean couldn’t remember when or how anymore. To be honest, he was even forgetting why.

 _He should have written it down_ , he thinks as he grips dripping hands around the edge of the sink. The fact that he couldn’t remember turning the water on didn’t even register to him anymore. It was just a fact. He closed his eyes and squeezed his hands harder, as though his script would bleed through his fingers like pulp. He wasn’t sure if he was blaming Sam or himself right now.

 _Stupid_.

If only Sam had written it down, Dean could remember. He would know what to do. He always knew what to do, didn’t he? He was Dean fuckin’ W-

-forget it.

His brain was rushing and popping, a static wash of pictures and sound. Faces he maybe dreamt about? A diner he’d been to before? Where did all this blood come from? He didn’t even recognize the handwriting on the “door” note… how did he know how to read?

Warm shame spreads through Dean’s face and panic curls his spine in on itself until he’s too mad at himself to consider crying anymore. He didn’t know he had been crying until he saw his own stricken reflection.

_Stupid._

In his panic he starts mentally going through a list of names, people, facts he definitely knows, skills he still has, and places he took Sammy when they were younger. More lists. Things he was terrified to lose. Things that he was terrified his brain was _already_ losing without his approval.

His heartrate was picking up tempo as he tracks a slow, unseen movement towards his left shoulder, and he blinks awake to an empty hospital room and a splitting migraine.

He thought he closed his eyes for only a second again, but when Sam walks in with a coffee sometime later, he updates him on how he came back from a salt-and-burn to find Dean unconscious and bleeding on the floor. Apparently he knocked his head on the bathroom sink on his way down into a seizure.

The nurses also had to pump his stomach and found his seizure medication, as well as a pretty hefty blood alcohol content. They informed Sam they were keeping Dean under observation for suicidal ideation, considering the circumstances. All this was told with a tone that betrayed how very tired Sam looked now, nothing at all like the spry 20-something that should be flirting them out of answering anything real.

Once the next shift of nurses does their vitals check and leaves the room, Dean holds his brother’s arm in a death-grip and asks to go home. He didn’t know how to convince him this all wasn’t on purpose, but he must have looked pathetic enough for Sam to relent and help sneak him out.

His dreams were filled with nothing but wandering empty rooms, calling for a name he couldn’t remember. Each time he woke up he was surprised at being able to top the loneliest he had ever felt in his life.

**~~~**

EARLIER:

 “I don’t know why it scares me so much, man.” Cas just looks at him and doesn’t respond. “I kept trying to find way out of this, or a different way to fix it, but it looks like it’s really happening. I can’t take this fucking waiting. It’s almost worse than before I went to Hell.”

Cas looks sad, almost guilty, but Dean doesn’t think to figure out why. The more time they’ve been spending together, the more they reveal to each other, the sadder the angel looks. Nothing at all like the righteous fury and dickishness of when they first met, but like he actually cares.

“See, the last time I died, I did stuff. I knew it was my fault. I kept my guns out until the very end. But this,” he gestures around himself, “just wasting away inside my own mind?”

“It’s not a question of fault, Dean. Yes, you traded your soul and you faced the consequences of that choice. But you did it to protect your brother. You never truly deserved the fires of Perdition.” He still has his head hanging down, so Cas adds “You won’t be alone, I promise. I’ll go with you.”

Dean picks his head up sharply and meets his gaze. He feels his face heat in shock and a little bit of shyness, but he doesn’t look away from the earnestness in Cas’ face. They share the moment for a long time before Dean’s brain starts working again, and he finds himself very okay with the possibility of Cas being the last one he sees.

**~~~**

“You’ve been talking in your sleep a lot lately. You never used to do that.”

“And?”

“AND… you mention the name ‘Cas’ sometimes.”

“And?”

“Who’s Cas, Dean?”

“I don’t fucking know, Sam. Jesus, need I remind you that I need reminding these days? I think I would have told you if I met some new friends at Sunday school.”

“Well I’m just saying, if there’s something or _someone_ -“ the amount of inflection probably caused a seismic event somewhere on the west coast, “-that you ever want to talk about, I’m here to listen.”

“Well thanks Oprah, but like I’ve said an exhausting number of times, I’m good.”

“You don’t need to be a dick about it.”

“Neither do you. I don’t talk to anyone anymore. You know that.” He wraps his jacket more tightly and petulantly around himself, and Sam at least has the decency to look ashamed.

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just-“

“Just what?”

“Just that despite everything… I miss you ditching me at Plucky Pennywhistles to go hang out with hot chicks. I miss seeing your dumb face stroll in at 7 AM with your tie as a headband and only one shoe. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you smile, or be the “real Dean”.”

There’s kind of an uncomfortable silence there, and he’s still so very tired and a bit queasy. He tries to see past his gut reaction to start a fight, to what Sam might actually be saying.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve been something that resembles “happy”.”

Dean uses the pause to try and come up with the last time he kicked Sam’s ass, just for the hell of it. Or the last time he went out for a beer, hustled some pool, or sat through a whole movie. He comes up surprisingly and sadly short.

“There ain’t a whole lot for me to be happy about right now, Sam.”

“I know. I get it. I just… miss seeing you _try_ is all.”

Sam sounds so defeated, so disappointed, that the next words are out of Dean’s mouth before he realizes.

“I _am_ trying. You know how hard it is for me to remember Mom these days?”

Sam snaps his head away from the road to look at him, and Dean has to cough out the tremor in his voice he knows his brother heard. He takes a second to breathe in the moment they’re apparently having right now, flying down some random southern winter highway.

“All the shit that I never wanted to remember, all the fights, Dad leaving, the way you cried when we couldn’t feed you. The damn fire. It’s all here, Sam,” he taps his head for emphasis, “but the good things, they’re ten times harder to hold on to.”

When Sam just looks at him instead of responding, Dean looks out the window and ends with, “I’m so tired.”

“I’m sorry, Dean.”

“Me too.”

Sam watches the road and lets the crisp air hold the break for a couple minutes before he speaks again, and Dean shoves his hands in his jean pockets to warm the sudden chill.

“Have you considered something else though?”

“What’s that?”

“That you’re not in this alone.” He doesn’t know what to say to that, but Sam keeps going.

“I know there’s a lot of shit you had to carry. And I hated it for so long how you just took it all without question and just did it, like it’s all you were programmed to do, or whatever. Like you weren’t allowed to slow down and you _had_ to pick up everyone’s baggage along the way.”

“And now it’s catching up to me?” Dean catches onto the insinuation there, but instead of being offended, he’s reeling a little bit.

Truth be told he’s always been a little afraid to send anything more than a perfunctory glance to his rear view mirror. Afraid, deep down, of what he’ll see following him. So he did the only thing he knew how to do, drive faster.

“And now it’s catching up to you,” Sam echoes. “But this time you don’t have to do everything by yourself! I know it sucks having to take a backseat for a while, but I’m here. Bobby’s here. We’re handling it.”

Dean’s brain is still mulling over all that, when Sam declares with an air of finality, “We’re not gonna let you chase us away so you can go die in a hole somewhere. I know you want to, but this is only temporary, Dean.”

As usual when one of their “bro talks” doesn’t end in his favor, he’s pretty uncomfortable. His brother has a knack for getting under his skin in the most random and unfortunate circumstances.

They’re not kids anymore and he knows they have to work shit out by talking now, but a part of him misses the times when they could fight and hug it out. As bipolar a solution as he realizes it is this late in life, he could really use the distraction from having to constantly _think_ about things.

On the other hand, though he wishes he still had the energy to try and fight it out, he knows realistically that Sam isn’t 6-foot-forever of all nerd, and could easily drop him to the mat in no time flat. Both mentally and physically.

He doesn’t know what else to say, but after a moment of deliberation Sam seems to come to a decision and his mood takes a 180. He smiles and takes one hand off the wheel to reach over and place it on his older brother’s shoulder, and shakes him bodily from side to side. A delayed echo of the conversation they started.

“We’ll get this thing figured out before you know it, then you can bang all the gongs you want.”

He really is a Big Red Dog sometimes, huge dumb paws and all. Dean has to fight hard to hold back a smile in spite of himself.

He snorts, “Gross.”

He leans forward to punch on the radio and turn it up to shut-up-Sam-volume, and sinks back down in his seat. Sam just continues to smile all self-satisfied and adjusts his sunglasses back onto his nose.

Though he has no clue what all that business about this “Cas” person was, he can’t help a flush that creeps up his neck without warning. Something about the name that he can’t quite figure out and it makes him even more tired, so he finds retreating into the collar of his jacket to be a better use of his time.

He still feels like a child on a family road trip, relegated to passenger seats for the foreseeable future, and finds small comforts in the only ambiance he was ever safe in. He drifts off to the squeak and rumble of the car and Sam’s off-key humming to the nonsense coming out of the speakers.

The last thing on his mind before he finally falls asleep is when he peeks out from behind his jacket to gaze blearily at a riverside rolling by the window. Blue.

**~~~**

SOME TIME BACK:

“So, I’m kind of running out of options here. I’m honestly scared for him, and I don’t know how he can pull through this one.”

Dean pauses outside the door to listen. Did Sam hear something else from the doctor? He grips the handle tight enough to cause pain in the ligaments of his fingers and all but presses his ear to the plywood surface.

“I know I asked you for my brother back, so many times…. but not like this. This isn’t him. We need help. So if you’re listening, God. If _anyone_ is listening-“

“-They’re not.” Sam flinches and Dean punctuates his entrance with the slamming of the door. “I thought we established this 1,000 unbearable losses ago.”

His voice only betrays a little bit of bite, which he’s actually quite proud of. It’s been a while since he allowed the anger to only fill him in waves rather than split him at the seams.

The very careful and measured way he sets down his plastic bag and six-pack of amber ale on the tabletop reminds him of his interrogation days. He feels an itch climbing up his back, and his movements become stiffer and more deliberate. He does a quarter-turn in his brother’s direction.

Sam breathes out heavily through his nose and he can practically hear his jaw working with his gritted teeth. He still won’t look at him.

“What the hell was that about?”

“Where did you go?”

“Out.”

Sam makes a pointed glance at the bag on the table.

“You’re not supposed to be drinking.”

“Answer the question.”

“Well you heard enough, I thought. Sounds like you already know.”

“I’m not stupid, Sam.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Dean feels a nasty grin slide onto his face.

“Ooooh, kitty’s got claws….” he doesn’t have to act impressed here. “What’s the matter? Did your great big plan of action leave you as unfulfilled as it did me?”

“It’s not like that. I was just-“

“Just what, Sam? You wanted to go all Della Reese and hope for a miracle? You didn’t care who might _actually_ be listening and just decided that if they were, they’d even give a shit?”

“You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do. Of all people, I’d have thought you’d be the easiest one to get on board with this whole “totally logical, boring, normal” medical thing. But you just won’t let it go. Like the heart attack thing.”

“You recovered from that though.”

“Because that was a reaper on a leash! Jesus fucking Christ Sam, sometimes these things are boring AND devastating as shit at the same time! We can’t just go around pretending to be exceptions to the rules all the time.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the same thing I said back then. What’s dead should stay dead. Maybe this is the universe’s karma or whatever telling me I shouldn’t be here.”

Sam goes red in the face, stricken.

“Fuck you, Dean!”

“What?” He’s momentarily thrown off by his brother’s outburst.

“Fuck. You. You always do this to yourself! When it’s someone else you’re the first one to run in guns blazing. But you won’t even lift a finger to fight for yourself! Why are you just ready to roll over and die?”

“Who says I’m ready?”

“You just did!”

“I’m not. I said _you_ need to be ready. I’m saying that we all need to get on board with this _very_ real _very_ soon. I’ve always been ready to die. I know my place.”

Sam is still fuming, his chest heaving in the space between them.

“And the rest of us aren’t allowed to fight for you? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Sam regards him, furious. Then he unclenches his fists and goes over the chair Dean had thrown his jacket over and savagely rips his own out from under it. The ends and the zipper catch some of the loose contents of the table sitting next to it and scatter them across the carpet.

His point seemingly made, Sam throws a “I don’t know why I’m wasting my fucking time then,” over his shoulder before heading out the door and slamming it behind him.

That night, while talking with Cas, Dean has enough self-preservation to realize the irony of his argument with Sam, and doesn’t bring it up to the angel. He probably already knows, though.

~

NOW:

It was a quiet night.

Sam fell asleep a couple hours ago, but Dean just couldn’t bring himself to. Nightmares plagued him and he hadn’t closed his eyes yet. Fears of more seizures in his sleep, waking up alone, something going wrong in surgery. Or even surviving and breathing through the shell of the rest of his days until Sam took pity on him and put a pillow over his face to end it. So many routes tomorrow could take.

His tired mind wouldn’t rest and let him give in to the soothing possibility of his last night on Earth. He’s had a few of them and thought he would be used to the sensation by now.

He’s mad because he assumed, like all things, this would be something he would just sleep through or phase out, and before he knew it his fate would be out of his hands again. Only place he knew he had to look forward to was downstairs again, and he was secure enough in that knowledge to be at peace with it. He wouldn’t even have to drive there.

But no, he heard every tick of the clock that was nailed to the adjacent wall. Every one of Sam’s deep breaths and heavy snores. Every glimpse of the nighttime Phoenix traffic crescendo and fade outside the motel room window. He lay there and watched all his thoughts on the popcorn ceiling roil around like the city smog.

What a terrible, anticlimactic, tepid place to die.

More than his anger and exhaustion, the quiet activity of the world having nothing to do with him, the expectation and dread of tomorrow, going to sleep alone and unseen, was his sadness. His anger that he realized he was using to cover up his sadness, so he wouldn’t have to recognize it for what it was. But if ever there was a time to give a name to his thoughts and emotions, it would have to be his last.

He wasn’t sad for any of the typical reasons of a life unlived. If anything, he did more living in the year before the last time he died than he ever did. He had always lived fast and without regrets.

No, this time he felt like he had disappointed so many people on his way here. All the times he knew he wasn’t mentally up to snuff and Sam had to carry them through a job he never should have been abandoned in. All the calls he’d had to relay for other hunters to take care of things he would have fixed by himself. Forcing Bobby to watch another person he cared about deteriorate into a shell of their former selves.

All because he couldn’t do the job anymore. Everyone had to shift over and around and make room and adjustments for his useless ass. And he was originally supposed to be the one to take care of them all.

They never should have had to worry, because he always took care of it. And now.

Now he was alone and selfish and wondering who else he had let down in all of this mess. Just to make himself feel shittier. It grated on him in such a way he was powerless to prevent.

Powerless. Dean Winchester was powerless.

The thought alone brought him circling right back to anger. How in the hell did all these people count on him in the first place, if he was just resigned to wait in this bed on what was possibly his last night to really do something? There had to be something.

How could he be expected to quietly fade away and die?

The absurdity of this mortality filled him with a newfound sense of determination. Feeble as it was, given the circumstances, it gave him the energy to lift himself off his side and sit up in bed. It was when he slid his boots on his bare feet and was reaching for his jacket, that a brief flutter of exactly what the fuck he was expecting to do right now crossed his mind.

But now was not the time for thought, now was the time for action. He needed to make it count.

He peered around the contents of the kitchenette counter for a few seconds before finding the room key and slipping quietly out the door. So quiet, he took a second to pride himself on at least retaining some aspect of a hunter’s instinct, before remembering that nothing short of a bomb going off could be louder than Sam’s snoring.

He took a moment to cast a quick, fond glance over his shoulder at the sleeping lump of sheets before he padded out and towards the parking lot.

His heartrate quickened ever so slightly and his own car keys rattled shakily in his hand as he approached the black behemoth from an angle he had missed so much. Sam’s voice echoed helpfully in his mind before he could fiddle with anything, “ _It’s the_ square one _, Dean!”_ and he unlocked the door, slid inside the driver’s seat and ran appreciative, loving hands over the steering wheel.

Before he could lose himself too much in the sensations of being right back _home_ , he gathered his thoughts and knew he still had work to do. The purpose of his mission fueled his resolve, and he placed his hands dutifully at 10 and 2, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

“I know it’s been a long time. More than a long time. But I wanted to say… I’m sorry. I’m here now, and that’s all that matters.”

No answer, of course, but he wasn’t expecting one.

“I had a lot of time to think about it. About everything. And I finally get it. All this time I was scared. I was raised to be scared, to be terrified all the fucking time. But now, I don’t think I can do this. I can’t be this…. _thing_ that dies too scared of my own shadow. I took it out on you and you didn’t do anything to deserve that.”

There’s an active silence that he acknowledges during the pauses in his monologue. The passing cars on the street in front of their motel. Airplanes occasionally streaming overhead. The slight creak of the leather as he adjusts himself and his hands on the steering wheel. But more than that, there’s an advancing tension he can’t explain, and it’s familiar enough he doesn’t open his eyes to break his train of thought. It just feels like a comfortable and constant presence, one that’s always been there and he’s never seen it.

He continues speaking to the stillness inside the cab.

“I felt betrayed for so long, I think. I would always ask myself, “how could all this awful shit keep happening around me, happening _to_ me, and I hadn’t heard a peep from you?” It was like my dad all over again, only somehow worse, because now I couldn’t do anything about it. No matter how hard I fought, it all found a way to keep coming back and taking everything I ever loved. I hated it. I hated _you_.” He grits every word out, not even caring about the angry tears getting lodged in his throat and pressing on.

“But I can’t do that anymore. I’m so tired, all the time. And I want to _live._ I don’t even know if I want to live through _this_ specifically, but I’m just sick of being so fucking mad all the time.”

He still doesn’t open his eyes, but he takes a hand away from his fierce grip on the wheel to run it over his face.

“But I just know I can’t -if this is the end, if this is _really_ the end. You gotta promise they’ll be okay. I know they will be, but I can’t just leave again and not know I have someone to watch over them. I’m praying here.”

To whom, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if anyone even heard him, but he finds he doesn’t particularly care about the details anymore. He takes it on blind faith, and is reassured that he at least tried.

He lets the tears flow freely as they bleed out a rush of warmth and take away his fear and shame, and it’s all he can do to not laugh from the relief of it all.

He still doesn’t open his eyes, but he can imagine the world outside tinged sepia and smeared in that stereotypical way epiphanies usually go. He knows rain never falls cold and forgiving in Phoenix , so he lets himself live in his fantasy for a while.

He can almost picture someone else beside him in his mind’s eye. And they would be smiling, proud of him in all the ways that matter.

When he finally makes his way back inside the room to go to sleep, he’s lulled away by his newfound sanctuary of catharsis. He drifts away to a phantom touch of soft fingers through his hair, and he doesn’t worry about anything for a while.

~~~~

Not a lot of people look excited to be in a hospital in the first place, but the air around the three lumberjack-looking men as they strode through the atrium was one akin to a funeral procession. The second tallest of them especially, looked like he’d aged ten years overnight and was carrying mountains of stress in his shoulders. Nevertheless, his face was resolute as his gait, and he followed his companions to the information and patient registration desk.

Dean Winchester was certain before walking into the hospital that morning that he was not leaving this hospital the same man as when he entered it. Even if it all didn’t go to shit and the consequences were somehow more manageable than they had been anticipating, he knew the energy around him would forever be different. Roles had been rearranged and redefined, and habits had been turned upside down and relieved of their lunch money. There wouldn’t need to be changes because changes had already been made, and they would all simply have to deal.

He was definitely an ultimatum kind of guy, and in this game of life or death, he’d very much like to choose. The option and the choice, rather than the outcome, was what set him free.

Still, he walked and followed along a little shakily as they gave him his wristband and informed him they would be sedating him for his final MRI before surgery. He couldn’t help the lump in his throat as he turned to Bobby and Sam in one last-ditch hope for them to call this whole thing off.

It was always hard to say goodbye.

Bobby embraced him solidly and informed him “We ain’t goin anywhere, you idjit.” but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Sam’s jaw worked double-time to keep his emotions at bay, and he responded to Dean’s “c’mon Sammy, no chick flick moments” with a wet laugh and “yeah, but you love chick flick moments,” before both brothers quickly gathered the other in their arms.

After he let go, Dean reached up around his neck and removed the horned amulet Sam had given him when they were kids, and dropped it into his hand. “For safekeeping,” he said. Sam nodded reverently and strung it around his own neck.

Dean felt strangely light as he followed the nurse into the back room to get changed and prepped for sedation. The surety of the situation seemed to remove all the pressure from his brain, and he was freaking out about how much he was not freaking out. He didn’t even flinch when they started the IV in his hand.

His last thoughts before he felt himself slipping away sounded something like a prayer, and he smiled.

~

His mouth felt like it was full of fog and lint, and the voices outside of his closed eyes were very perplexed and urgent. One of them sounded like Sam.

“What do you mean, ‘It’s gone’?”

“Just like I said, our preliminary MRI revealed no evidence of the cavernous malformation, or that there ever _was_ one. We decided not to proceed with surgery.”

“But it was there on his last MRI result.”

“Yes, I know. I don’t understand it either, and we will need to run some more tests to make sure. But from what we saw this morning, it just disappeared.”

“Can it do that?” That sounded like Bobby.

“I’ve never seen this before, no. But we can’t ignore what we saw. Or _didn’t_ see, rather.”

“I’m confused.”

“We all are. Like I said, we’ll need to run some more tests. I’ll be back as soon as I find out more. He should be waking up from anesthesia soon.” A rustle of clothing and then just Bobby and Sam’s voices.

“What the hell?”

“I don’t know.”

“No seriously, what the hell?” A bit of indistinct murmuring between them, and Dean opened his eyes to see them scratching their heads at the luminescent printout of his brain on the wall.

“Guys?” he rasped out, and they both moved quickly to stand on either side of him, their eyes wide and concerned.

“How you feelin’, son?”

“Peachy,” he licked his lips to moisten them. “Like literally, peachy. You remember that ‘James and the Giant Peach’ with the big grasshopper dude? I feel like that. Mushy.” he concluded.

“Well, anesthesia will do that, I heard.” Sam sounded slightly amused, but the worry line on his forehead hadn’t smoothed out.

“What happened?”

“I think they’re still trying to figure that out-“ Sam starts, but Bobby cuts him off.

“-They had you all ready to go into surgery, but we got called in because there were… changes.”

“What do you mean? What changes.” His head was still very fuzzy and very slow, and he was _very_ thirsty.

“I mean that they couldn’t find that damn blood vessel thing. They said it’s gone.”

“What? Gone? Like they couldn’t see it, or like they need a better camera?”

“No, you idjit. Gone, as in ‘disappeared.’ Nonexistent.” He doesn’t understand.

“I don’t understand.”

“We don’t either.”

“I mean, how could this thing have just disa-“

“Mr. Armstrong?” a nurse poked her head in the room, and seeing that Dean was awake, addressed him directly. “You have a visitor.”

A tall guy in a trenchcoat stepped out from behind her, and nodded briefly at her as she darted back out. At first glance he looked like a weary tax accountant, complete with bedhead and a too-large suit, and he took a couple more steps into the room with purpose. His face was rigid, but his eyes were limpid and expressive.

Both Bobby and Sam straightened their backs and regarded the stranger with immediate suspicion. He seemed to pay them no mind and had eyes only for Dean from the moment he walked in.

“Who are you?” Bobby growled out in a warning tone, but the stranger continued to ignore him.

“Hello Dean.” Something about the tone of his voice, his eyes, the tension ratchetting up in the room, Dean couldn’t tear his eyes away. He knew this guy.

Bobby and Sam must have seen the total lack of panic or fear on Dean’s face, or else they were as rooted to the spot as he was, but no one reacted and they all watched as the stranger moved closer to the hospital bed and gently placed his hand over the exposed scar on Dean’s left shoulder. It fit perfectly.

Dean let out a sharp gasp as a wash of images flooded behind his eyes _. Climbing flames, a flutter of wings, jewel-bright blue reflecting a light inside of him he thought he had lost forever. The chorus of voices humming, singing, submerging, arguing, and suddenly silent on his name. The smoothing touch of a strong hand through his hair._

It was instantaneous and white-hot, and left him panting in his bed, but the memories stayed and now he was being observed with a wide and hopeful blue gaze.

Sam and Bobby both moved to rush to him, but they hadn’t lifted their heels off the ground when Dean gasped out, “Cas?”

Smile lines crinkled the skin around the other man’s eyes, and his face softened in relief. The hand that had been on Dean’s shoulder trailed away and before it left completely, Dean grabbed at his wrist and held it fast.

Both Sam and Bobby looked utterly perplexed and darted their gaze back and forth between the two, apparently familiar, men.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam asked first. “Who is this?”

Dean smiled at both his brother and surrogate father. “Sam, Bobby? This is Castiel, Angel of the Lord. It’s a long story.”

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my friends and beta readers who gave me the courage to make this story possible. And thank you so much to https://oh-cassie.tumblr.com/ for your beautiful artwork for this.
> 
> Based on real life events, this was what I needed back then.


End file.
